SHLOYME YITSKHAKI

SHLOYME YITSKHAKI (1904-March 10, 1966)

            He was born Shloyme Levin in Vilna.  He studied in a “cheder metukan” (improved religious elementary school) and in Rameyle’s Yeshiva, later graduating from a Russian high school.  He was a cofounder of Haḥaluts (The pioneer) and Maccabi in Vilna.  He made aliya to Israel in 1925.  He worked with tobacco in the Galilee and in the salt mines in Atlit.  He completed a teacher’s course of study in Jerusalem, and then was sent by the Jewish Agency to organize the school curriculum in Salonica.  In 1930 he studied political economy and foreign languages in Geneva, Switzerland.  In 1936 he took part in the Rambam (Maimonides) celebrations [800^th anniversary of his birth] in Cordova, Spain, after which, as a representative of several newspapers, he was in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War (late 1936-1937).  In 1939 he was arrested in Romania for attacking in his writing the anti-Semitic regime in that country, though he managed to escape in time.  He was back in Israel by 1941.  At the time of the war of independence, he was at the siege of Jerusalem and fought with the Hagana.  From 1930 he was linked to the Jewish press in an assortment of countries.  He published hundreds of articles in: Haynt (Today) in Warsaw; Keneder odler (Canadian eagle) in Montreal; Haarets (The land) and Davar (Word) in Tel Aviv; as well as in the Yiddish press in Argentina, South Africa, Australia, France, and elsewhere.  He was a correspondent for the United States and English-language newspapers throughout the world.  He collected Sefardic folklore in the Balkan countries.  He penned two novels on Sefardic life, which were published in various newspapers.  He died in Tel Aviv.

Source: D. Tidhar, in Entsiklopedyah leḥalutse hayishuv uvonav (Encyclopedia of the pioneers and builders of the yishuv), vol. 5 (Tel Aviv, 1952), p. 2326.