PSAKHYE LAMM

PSAKHYE LAMM (1879-1965)

            He was born in Gribov (Grybów), near Sandz, eastern Galicia.  At age twelve he left with his parents for Hungary.  He studied in religious elementary schools and yeshivas, and he later graduated from a public school.  He was a cantor, a preacher, a ritual slaughterer, a religion teacher in Transylvania, a businessman, and a traveling salesman in Vienna.  Over the years 1915-1918, he served in the Austrian army, was wounded at the war front, and returned to Vienna, and from there in 1922 he made his way to the United States.  For one year he worked as a ritual slaughterer in New York and later, until 1926, he was a preacher, a rabbi and cantor-ritual slaughterer in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, and until 1938 in Bayonne, New Jersey.  From 1938 he was back in New York.  He began writing stories from the life of yeshiva lads in Hungary in the publications of the Satmar Rebbe and other Orthodox periodicals in Austria-Hungary of the past.  In America he published articles, travel narratives, and Torah novellae in a variety of religious newspapers.  In book form, he published: Mayse gelesvil, oder der griner reverend vos kemft gegen der geler gefar, emese lebedige bilder in di kleyne kontri-kehiles (The story of Gelesville [Yellowtown], or the immigrant rabbi who is fighting against great danger, true living images in small country communities) (New York, 1927), 208 pp., with an “Introduction to the Story of Gelesville,” in which he recounts a bit of his own biography.  Chapters of this book were published in Yidishes tageblat (Jewish daily newspaper) in New York.

Source: G. Zelikovitsh, in Yidishes tageblat (New York) (March 19, 1926).

Khayim Leyb Fuks