MAX H. VAYNBERG

MAX H. VAYNBERG (March 16, 1883-1962)

            He was born in Soroka, Bessarabia.  He graduated from a Russian high school.  In 1901 he moved to the United States, continued his studies there and in 1912 graduated from medical school in Pittsburgh.  He specialized in psychiatry.  He was an instructor in pathology.  For many years he served as the head of a number of hospitals in Pittsburgh.  From 1910, he was an active leader in the Jewish community.  He was a cofounder of the People’s Relief Committee and other economic and cultural institutions in Pittsburgh.  He began writing in 1905 with stories, features, and articles on medical issues for: Forverts (Forward) and Fraye arbeter shtime (Free voice of labor) in New York; and Detroyter vokhnblat (Detroit weekly newspaper) (1905-1917); among others.  From 1933 he was a regular contributor to Yivo-bleter (Pages from YIVO) (Vilna-New York), in which he published reviews of books and treatises of a scholarly-research character.  He also placed work in the YIVO publication Yidishe shprakh (Yiddish language) in New York.  He was the author of Sholem-aleykhems tipn (Sholem-Aleichem’s characters), a psychoanalytic analysis, chapters of which were published in various periodicals.  He translated into Yiddish Jack London’s Der ayzener knafl (The iron heel) (New York, 1919), second edition (New York, 1925), 380 pp.  He was as well a regular contributor to medical and general scientific journals in English.  He was last living in Pittsburgh.

Sources: Yivo-biblyografye (YIVO bibliography) 1 and 2 (New York), see index; Who’s Who in Pennsylvania (1939), p. 939.