MORTKHE
BEN-HILEL COHEN (HACOHEN) (January 8, 1856-Fecember 7, 1936)
He was born in Mohilev (Mogilev),
Byelorussia, into a family of wealth.
His father, a scholar and a pious man but having become a man of secular
habits, was almost always away from home on business, and the young lad was
raised under the influence of his grandfather, Rabbi Tsvi Cohen, a wealthy man
from Shklov (Szkłów) and a Hassid. He
studied the old Jewish ways with the best teachers who were put up in their
home, and Yiddish and Russian—with Yiddish writers who would drop by for an
hour during the day. In the effectively
closed courtyard of Tsvi Cohen, which also served as a study hall, also lived
the city bookseller, and through him Cohen became acquainted, while quite
young, with the literature of the Jewish Enlightenment in Hebrew and
Yiddish. His literary activity began
with correspondence pieces in Halevanon
(Lebanon) in 1879, Hatsfira (The
siren), and Hashaḥar
(The dawn). He then moved to St.
Petersburg, became in 1879 a contributor to Rassvet
(Dawn), later (until 1882) secretary of its editorial board, and there
published, among other items, a monograph on Jewish farmers in southern Russia
(which appeared separately as well). He
also placed work in Russkii Evrei
(Russian Jewry) and many years later in the anthologies Perezhitoie (The past). He
was active in the movement of Ḥibat tsiyon (Love of
Zion), visited the land of Israel in 1890-1891, and described both trips there
in his work Al admat yisrael (To the
land of Israel). In 1891 he published
his essay “Naḥala mevohelet”
(Legacy distressed), which criticized the colonization of the “Lovers of Zion”
and their representatives and made a huge impact. In 1897 he was a delegate to the first
Zionist Congress in Basel and the first one there to give a speech in
Hebrew. From the early 1890s, he was contributing
to the Russian business and financial press, and he was considered an expert on
issues concerning the lumber industry along the Dnieper River. He wrote a great deal for the Hebrew press
under such pen names as: M. Ḥashmonai,
Miḥa Darkhan, Abuha
Deshmuel, and Ploni. In 1907 he moved
with his family to Israel and settled in Jaffa.
He was one of the founders of Tel Aviv.
He composed the regulations for the neighborhood and for the Jewish
community in Jaffa. He published
articles in: Hashiloaḥ
(The shiloah), Hazman (The time), Haolam (The world), and Hatsfira; and he served as co-editor of Moledet (Homeland). During WWI he founded a savings and loan bank
in Tel Aviv. He was also active in the Herzliya
High School. He was a founder of
Yeshivat Hamishtalmim as a seminary for Mizrachi. He also founded the highest-level Hebrew Justice
of the Peace and savings and loans banks in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and
elsewhere. He was one of the first
initiators to establish the Hebrew writers union in Israel. He published some twenty books in Hebrew,
among them Sefer shemot (The book of
names), which included the biographies of forty-four of the earliest Zionists,
writers, and community leaders, as well as his own autobiography (published in
1938, after his death) (Jerusalem, 208 pp.).
To Yiddish he was drawn like a
follower of the Jewish Enlightenment to zhargon,
but he just happened to be an extraordinary storyteller-depicter with an authentic
folk idiom, a fine sense of humor, a juiciness of language, and a true strength
of image. He began writing in Yiddish
for Der yud (The Jew), in which he
published (using the pen name “Gut morgn”) images and scenes from Jewish life
in Lithuania. He was later a regular
contributor to Fraynd (Friend). Using the pseudonym “Der Eygener,” he
introduced in Fraynd the short
feature “Vos gehert-vos gezen” (What was heard and what was seen); he also
wrote longer features entitled “Koolshe gesheftn” (Public commerce), and (under
the pen name “Ben-Hilel”) a historical treatment “Khmelnitskis tsayt” (Khmelnytsky’s era) in 1906, among others. In the monthly Dos leben (The life) 5-6 (1905), he published a longer work
entitled “Yidishe klal-asifes” (Jewsh community meetings). In a volume of his Yiddish works, entitled In mame-loshn (In Yiddish) (Vilna,
1935), 303 pp.—a collections of memoirs, sketches, descriptions, and
characterizations—which although published in Vilna, was edited and compiled in
Israel, the author found it necessary to write in his introductory dedication: “This
batch of published pages—a paper tombstone in memory of my dear mother, Rivke
daughter of Rabbi Yankev Varhaftik-Lubliner.
Dear Mother, this little book I am publishing not for any honor, not for
the money. I seek no sustenance and I
have grave doubts about any honor coming my way. I am publishing this book of Yiddish writings
only as a memory—for you, my dear mother.
So, it is in your language which you taught me. I should have done this long ago, but now is
the last opportunity. I am all alone, I
your youngest son will soon be coming to join you…. You must have a brilliant paradise, dear
mother. Jerusalem, on the anniversary of
her death, 1934/1935.” He died at Mount
Carmel and was buried at Binyamina.
Sources:
Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2 (with
a bibliography); D. Frishman, in Shriftn
(Warsaw/New York) 3 (1911), pp. 108-14; Sefer
hayovel (Jubilee volume) (Jerusalem, 1924/1925); D. D. Tidhar, in Entsiklopedyah
leḥalutse
hayishuv uvonav (Encyclopedia of the pioneers and builders of the
yishuv), vol. 3 (Tel Aviv, 1949), pp. 1114-16; Avrom Reyzen, in Tsukunft (New York) (October 1930), pp.
707-11; R[ivlin] E[liezer], in Morgn-zhurnal
(New York) (March 15, 1932); Logos (Sh. Rozenfeld), in Tog (New York) (March 25, 1932); Sh. Dubnov, in Tog (October 16, 1932; October 22,
1932); Ben-Tsien Kats, in Morgn-zhurnal
(December 11, 1932); Joseph Klausner, Darki
likrat hateḥiya vehageula, autobiyografya (1874-1944) (Routes to
resurrection and redemption, autobiography, 1874-1944) (Tel Aviv, 1946), pp.
55, 185, 187, 313; A. Gordin, in Tog
(October 16, 1932); Sefer shimon dubnov
(Volume for Shimon Dubnov) (London-Jerusalem, 1954), pp. 286-90; Y. Likhtnboym,
Hasipur haivri, antologya (The Hebrew
story, an anthology) (Tel Aviv, 1955), p. 517.
Mortkhe Yofe
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