SHOLEM YELIN

SHOLEM YELIN (ca. 1896-1943)

            He was born in Shedlets (Siedlce), to a father who was a bookseller.  He was the grandson of Yitskhok Lifshits, the author of such religious texts as Sukat shalom (Tabernacle of peace) and Taame minhagim (The tastes of customs).  He was cofounder of the Orthodox youth organization “Tevuna” (Reason).  When there was a rift in the organization, he became the cofounder of the Shedlets organization “Agudat Shelume Emune Yisrael” (Organization of the peaceful and faithful of Israel) which later became Agudat Yisrael, and he served as a council member of the Shedlets Jewish community administration.  Over the years 1924-1928, he was co-editor (with Rabbi Meyer Shvartsman, Y. A. Tsuker, and Shmuel Ginzburg) of the Shedlets weekly newspaper Unzer veg (Our path), in which he wrote essays under the pen name Shilomi.  During the Nazi occupation he was confined in the Shedlets ghetto, and when it was liquidated he was transported with his family to Treblinka and murdered there.

Sources: A. Faynzilber, Af di khurves fun mayn heym, khurbn shedlets (At the destruction of my home, the Holocaust in Shedlets) (Tel Aviv, 1952); Yitsḥak Kaspi, in Sefer yizkor lekehilat shedlets (Remembrance volume for the community of Shedlets [Siedlce]) (Tel Aviv and Buenos Aires, 1956); information from Rabbi Shvartsman in Winnipeg.

Khayim Leyb Fuks

N. B. “Sholem Yelin” is known as a pseudonym for Yude-Arye Tsuker.  See the entry for the latter in this series.