SHOYEL (SHIYE) HURVITS

SHOYEL (SHIYE) HURVITS (June 18, 1886-December 31, 1956)

            He was born in Berezin (Berezino), Minsk district, Byelorussia.  He was the son of the wedding entertainer Avrom Hurvits—in his youth they dubbed him “Shoyel avroml dem marshaleks” (Shoyel, son of Avroml the majordomo).  He studied in religious elementary school and in the yeshivas of Berezin, Bobruisk, and Borislav (Boryslaw).  At age sixteen he traveled around the neighboring villages and studied with the children of the settlers there.  Later he gave private lessons in Berezin.  In 1902 he joined the Bund, was a party agitator, stood at the forefront of the Berezino self-defense in 1905, and on several occasions was arrested.  In 1914 he moved to the United States and made his way to Galveston, Texas.  He lived for a time in St. Paul, Minnesota, and thereafter moved to New York.  He later worked as a teacher in a Talmud-Torah in Massachusetts, before returning to New York where he worked as a paper hanger.  He served with the American army in 1918 in France and Germany.  After returning home, he studied in the Jewish teachers’ seminary in New York, and after graduation he was a teacher, from 1923, in Workmen’s Circle circles in various cities, among them Youngstown, Ohio.

            He began writing for Yidishes tageblat (Jewish daily newspaper) in New York in 1914 (with a letter, “An eytse fun a grinem” [Advice from a recent immigrant]), and from that point he published stories, miniatures, images from his war experiences, and memoirs from the old country in: Fraye arbete shtime (Free voice of labor), Forverts (Forward), Tog (Day), Der amerikaner (The American), Der veker (The alarm), Der fraynd (The friend), Shul un heym (School and home), Yidishe shprakh (Yiddish language), Unzer shul (Our school), and Unzer tsayt (Our time)—all in New York.  Hurvits left in manuscript form a monograph on his father the wedding entertainer in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Byelorussia, as well as several volumes entitled “Zikhroynes fun mayn lebn” (Memoirs from my life) which are a contribution to the history of the Jewish working man in the old country and in America.  He was the father of the writer Meyer Hurvits.  He died in New York.

Sources: E. Presman, Der durkhgegangener veg, oytobyografye (The roads passed, autobiography) (New York, 1950), pp. 146, 147, 189, 203; Yedies fun yivo (New York) 64 (March 1957); H. Leivick, in Tsukunft (New York) (July-August 1957).