LEYZER
KASVAN (LAZAR CASSVAN) (March 8, 1852-April 16, 1916)
He was born in Sniatyn, eastern
Galicia. He attended the seminary courses
(1870-1873) in Vienna, where he heard lectures given by Dr. Adolf Jellinek,
Isaac-Hirsch Weiss, and others. In Dr.
Jellinek’s home he became acquainted with the poet Ludwig August Frankl and
translated his poems into Hebrew. Perets
Smolenskin later invited him to contribute to Hashaḥar (The dawn).
Cassvan went on to study philosophy and pedagogy in Berlin and (using
the pen name “Ezra hasofer” or Ezra the scribe) to publish literary and
scholarly articles in: Haivri (The
Jew), Hamagid (The preacher), Halevanon (The Lebanon), and Hatsfira (The siren). Compelled to interrupt his studies, he
settled in Romania where he worked as a teacher and in 1885 published his
grammar: Torat sefat ever, Manual de
gramatica Limbei Ebraice (Manual of Hebrew grammar) (Bucharest, 108
pp.). He was also working on a
Hebrew-Romanian dictionary. From 1879 he
published articles on pedagogy and natural science in Bucharest’s Hayoets (The advisor) and in other
Jewish periodicals of that era. In the
1880s he led a campaign for settling the land of Israel and came out publicly
against Jewish immigration to the United States. He wrote old-style satires in a fine folkish
Yiddish. He died in Brăila, a port city
on the Danube, leaving behind numerous unpublished writings in Hebrew and
Yiddish (mostly translations from German, French, and Romanian poets). Idishe
visnshaft (Jewish science) (Iași, 1927) published a fictional piece
by him.
Sources:
Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2; Y.
Botoshanski, in Mame yidish (Mother
Yiddish) (Buenos Aires, 1949).
Benyomen Elis
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