YANKEV DANILEVITSH (JACOB LEVITZ)

YANKEV DANILEVITSH (JACOB LEVITZ) (June 26, 1914-June 17, 1997)

            He was born in Kolne (Kolno), Poland.  He attended religious elementary school and yeshivas.  He came to the United States in 1931.  In 1940 he graduated from the Jewish teachers’ seminary in New York and in 1957 from Wayne University [now, Wayne State University] in Detroit.  In 1954 he received his doctoral degree from Dropsie College in Philadelphia for his dissertation: The Jewish Community in Mexico: Its Life and Education, 1900-1954 (232 pp.).  He worked as a teacher in Hebrew and Yiddish schools in the United States and Mexico, and he served as director of the A. Liessin Model School in Brooklyn and of the day school Hatikva (The hope) in Monterrey, Mexico.  He was a consultant to the Jewish educational bureau in Boston and administrator of the day school Kinneret Bet in New York.  He was the author of In shtile minutn (In quiet minutes) (New York, 1933), 40 pp., and placed a poem in Fraye arbeter-shtime (Free voice of labor) in New York in 1935.  He went on to contribute poetry and pedagogical articles to: Literarishe bleter (Literary leaves) in Warsaw; Tsukunft (Future), Niv (Expression), Der amerikaner (The American), Kinder-velt (Children’s world), and Getseltn (Tents)—in New York; Der veg (The way), Di shtime (The voice), and Meksikaner lebn (Mexican life)—in Mexico City; Yediot lamorim (Information for teachers), Pedagogisher buletin (Pedagogical bulletin), Jewish Education, and American Jewish Yearbook (1957).  He edited the publications of the educational institutions that he was responsible for managing.  He made a new translation of Sh. An-ski’s Dybbuk for television.  He also wrote Jewish educational materials, such as: “Bible Quiz Lotto” (1949).

Sources: Y. Glants, in Der veg (Mexico City) (February 10, 1945); Y. Leshtsinski, in Aktuele yedies fun yidishn lebn (New York) (January-February 1956).

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 188.]