KHAYIM-ARYE
KHAZAN (HAYIM ARYE ḤAZAN)
(June 15, 1863-1941)
He was born in Amdur, Grodno
district, Russian Poland. He studied in
religious primary schools and in the Grodno yeshiva. Under the influence of Yiddish literature,
primarily that of A. M. Dik’s chapbooks, at age fourteen he left the yeshiva,
became a village teacher to support himself, and there taught himself German
and Russian, with assistance from Bloshteyn’s grammar and Paperna’s textbook; he
later acquired French, Latin, and Greek.
He also excelled in mathematics.
In 1885 he moved to Warsaw and continued his self-studying. In 1893 he sat for the examinations to become
a teacher and worked in Jewish educational institutions in Grodno. In 1912 he settled in Vilna where he worked
as a teacher of Hebrew in Cohen’s High School, and from 1916 a teacher of
Hebrew and of general subject matter at the Hebrew high school of Dr. Yosef
Epshteyn. He published a number of works—largely
in the field of Hebrew linguistics and Bible criticism—in Hashiloaḥ (The shiloah)
between 1898 and 1914. He brought out a
Hebrew collection of translated songs, entitled Haneginot (Melodies) (Vilna, 1921), in which he included the poetry
of Avrom Reyzen, M. Rozenfeld, M. Varshavsky, and Sh. Frug, works by European
poets, and also folksongs. He compiled
in Hebrew a textbook of cosmography, Kosmografya,
o ikare hatekhuna (Cosmography, or its main features) (Tel Aviv, 194?), 228
pp.; and he published Torat haḥibur
vehasidur shel halashon haivrit (Rules of composition and arrangement in
the Hebrew language) (Vilna, 1929). He
translated for the Yiddish theater in Vilna a number of operas and operettas,
such as: “Di vayse lilye” (The white lily), “Di nakht fun libe” (The night of
love), “Graf luksemburg” (Count Luxembourg), and “Di freylekhe almone” (The
merry widow), among others.
Sources:
Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1; Z.
Zilbertsvayg, Leksikon fun yidishn teater
(Handbook of the Yiddish theater), vol. 1.
Yankev Kahan
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