DOVID GOLD

DOVID GOLD (1850-1927)

            He was born in Bessarabia.  He was a Christian convert who carried on his missionary work in Yiddish.  In the 1870s he lived in Odessa and in the mid-1880s he settled in Jerusalem.  He corresponded with Mendele, A.Gotlober, M. Spektor, and others, but they did not know of his conversion.  He wrote a bit for Roman-tsaytung (Fiction newspaper) and Yud (Jew) under pseudonyms.  He contributed to Jewish missionary periodicals in Jassy (Iași), and Stockholm and edited the missionary Mevaser-tsien (Herald Zion) in Jerusalem (1893-1894).  At the end of the 1880s, he brought out a pamphlet entitled Nitsokhn afn nitsokhn (Triumph upon triumph).  His work, “Yisroels tsurikker fun goles” (Israel’s return from the Diaspora), from the missionary Berit-am (Covenant of the people), appeared in a separate offprint as well (Vienna, 1921).  He died in Jerusalem.

Source: M. Kosover, in Folk un velt (New York) (December 1970).

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 130.