AVROM ZILBERSHTEYN (ABRAHAM SILVERSTONE)

AVROM ZILBERSHTEYN (ABRAHAM SILVERSTONE) (1900-January 27, 1951)

            He was born in Grayeve (Grajewo), Lomzhe district, Russian Poland.  He studied in religious elementary school, later in the Lomzhe and Brisk Yeshivas (with the weekly Torah study sessions).  In 1922 he made his way to the United States, lived for a time in Canada, and after that back in America—in Detroit and Chicago.  In 1932 he graduated from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, was then a rabbi in Cambridge (Massachusetts) and in Albany (New York).  In his last years, he lived in Tucson, Arizona, which is where he died.  In the main, he wrote in Hebrew and partly in Yiddish—original essays on Hassidism.  His Hebrew-language works appeared in Hadoar (The mail) in New York, and the Yiddish works: R’ yisroel bal shem tov (Rabbi Yisroel Baal Shem Tov) in conjunction with Sh. Ts. Zetser’s translation of Tsavaat haribash (The will of Rabbi Yisroel Baal Shem) and R’ pinkhes dem karetsers shabes (The Sabbath of Rabbi Pinkhes from Korets) which appeared in N. B. Minkov’s quarterly journal Bodn (Terrain) in New York (summer 1934 and no. 3 in 1935).  All of his essays were included in a posthumously published volume entitled Mimayene haḥasidut, midot umoadim (From the wells of Hassidism, features and festivals) (New York, 1957), 202 pp.  The two Yiddish essays can be found there on pp. 111-24 and 189-202.

Sources: R. Gordis, in Mimayene haḥasidut by Avrom Zilbershteyn (New York, 1957), pp. 7-11; M. Ribulov, in Mimayene haḥasidut, pp. 199-202.