BOREKH BAR REFUEL HALEVI YOFIS

BOREKH BAR REFUEL HALEVI YOFIS

            He was a ritual slaughterer, preacher, and educator in Taganrog, Russia.  He was the author of the religious texts: Igeret hashalom (Letter on peace) (St. Petersburg, 1883), 56 pp.; Kol bokhim (The sound of weeping) (Warsaw, 1897), 32 pp.; and the question-and-answer work in stylized Yiddish, Yafe leteshuva (Worth answering).  In Yiddish: Mayn zeydns hagode, oder a pogrom af dem afikoymen (My grandfather’s Haggada, or a pogrom on the afikomen) (Vilna, 1907), 32 pp.; Folks droshes (Popular sermons), “meaningful speeches on Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, Shavuot, Hanukkah, eternal Israel, many verses and texts by the sages, explained according to the spirit of the times” (Vilna, 1913), 106 pp., with an approbation (reprinted from Kol bokhim) by Rabbi Khayim Khizkia Medini and a foreword by the author (dated “Shevat” [December-January], 1911-1912), in which he noted: “It was a time when Yiddish (zhargon) had no literature, rarely might one encounter a religious work in Yiddish, and if one were to publish a religious book in Yiddish, it was of a certain kind of highly interesting and vapid fiction.  Aside from Tsenerene (“Women’s Bible”), we do not [even] have a concept that one might write a proper text in the Yiddish language, and now, thank God, we have overcome that time.  Yiddish has acquired greater importance.”

Sources: See the biography for “Ben-Tsion Alfes” in these entries (http://yleksikon.blogspot.ca/2014/07/ben-tsion-benzion-alfes.html).

Khayim Leyb Fuks