AVROM
LIESSIN (ABRAHAM WALT, VALT) (May 19, 1872-November 5, 1938)
He was born in Minsk to parents who
descended from great rabbis and Talmud scholars. On his father’s side—R. Ayzele Kharif; on his
mother’s side—the Maharshal, the Baal Halevush, and Rifoel Hamburger,
grandfather of the great intercessor in Germany, Gabriel Riesser. While still a child, he demonstrated a sharp
mind, extraordinary perception, and an unusual memory. At age seven or eight, he was already knowledgeable
in Talmud. On his own he said that he
was a little zealot and a big brat. His
friend, Dr. Sh. Louis, who studied with him in the same religious elementary
school, recounts in his memoirs how little Avreml was allowed to grown a
fingernail on the thumb of his right hand and, when he caught a student making
an error, he would scratch with his nail a small stripe on the wooden table. Avreml was also daring in the fights that
gangs of children struck up. He would
take on several by himself, and even if he came out of it battered, he wouldn’t
cry, but would boast about how he had “struck back” against the others. This independent character of the subsequent
poet and ethnic Jewish socialist had already emerged in his earliest youth. While quite young, he began reading
Hebrew-Aramaic religious texts. He was
drawn to history and such texts as: Shaarit
yisrael (Remnant of Israel), Shevat
yehuda (The tribe of Judah), Yosipon
(Josephus), and Shalshelet hayuḥasin
(Genealogy); these works exerted a strong impression on him. As a youngster, he could practically recite
the entirety of Kalman Shulman’s Divre
yeme olam (History of the world) by heart.
He was enthusiastic about historical heroes. In his youthful fantasy, he imagined that he
was himself a hero, standing up for the Jews and triumphant against
enemies. In episodes from his childhood
years, he recounted how, in his early youth when he had only just begun to
study Tanakh, the story of Yiftaḥ
(Jephthah) and his daughter made a deep impression on him. “I remember how one time I went to see the
triumphal gate that had been erected in Minsk to honor Mikhail Skobelev at the
time of his welcome. I looked and
suddenly recalled Yiftaḥ,
how he also returned valiantly from war and rode through such a gate, and how
he had to subsequently offer up his daughter to God—a story that tormented my
childhood fantasies. So, I took to
querying my father in an apprehensive voice if Skobelev had a daughter and if
she would appear opposite the gate. My
father glanced at me, grabbed and pinched me, and then laughed out loud: ‘No,
my son! Not to worry, Skobelev is still
unmarried.’” The child lived with the
heroes of Jewish history, and years later he immortalized them in his
poetry. At age nine he began writing
Hebrew poems, in the style of Moshe-Chaim Luzzatto and other poets. These poems were pious, though one can
already detect in them the singer of Jewish heroism. At age twelve, while he was studying in the
yeshiva in Vilkomir (Ukmergė), doubts concerning his faith
began in him to emerge. He ran away from
the yeshiva to Slobodka and fiercely plunged into the way of Musar which was
the spirit of the yeshiva there. Then,
at age thirteen, he went to study at the famous Volozhin yeshiva, but there he
was a bit of a heretic. He stayed in
this yeshiva for a year and acquired a reputation as a prodigy. Already in Volozhin he had around him a
circle of students with whom he spoke about faith, the Jewish Enlightenment,
and secular matters. The headmaster of
the yeshiva—known there as “Der alter” (The old man)—got wind of this, and when
someone additionally caught Liessin smoking a cigarette on the Sabbath, placed
him under a ban and drove him out of the yeshiva. Dr. Sh. Louis recounts in his memoirs how no
one would allow the fourteen-year-old Avreml into any Jewish home. He was afraid to return home and thus found a
place to stay at the very edge of the city, but several days later the woman of
the house found out that her tenant was under a ban, and she threw him
out. Fortunately, he already at that
time had students who provided him with concealed night lodging. He would steal in through a window into a
home of a friend or student at dark and would spend the night there. During the daytime he would walk around the
fields by the town. He was, however,
unable to maintain his life in this manner for very long, and the young Liessin
thus set off for Vilna. There he fell in
with a circle of the “Enlightened.” He
began to study secular subjects and sought out a teacher who would teach him
Russian and mathematics. M. M. Rozenboym
recounts how “we set out to choose from among the devoted yeshiva students in
Vilna the most capable lads, pour into them ‘European culture and science,’ and
campaign among them new, progressive, and radical ideas.” Young Liessin, who was still known at the
time by his birth name, Valt (Walt), approached the leader of this group of
radicals, Khonen Rapoport (later a leader of the Communist Party in France,
Charles Rapoport) and asked him to provide him with a teacher. And, Rozenboym, who met Liessin at this time,
explained how Rapoport interrogated him both in religion and in history. In religion he passed the examination, but
when it came to history, he exhibited such independence of thought and judgment
that both Rapoport and Rozenboym remained perplexed. When Rapoport asked him what he thought of
Robespierre, Liessin said that Robespierre was a tyrant and a despot. Socialists, especially closeminded Jewish
socialists, had heard no such thing at the time. Astounded, Rapoport, though, understood that standing
before him was an extraordinary young lad, and he forgave him: “He’ll learn and
develop, and bit by bit he’ll rise to the proper pathway….” Rozenboym then became his teacher of Russian
and mathematics, and he recounted that mathematics was no problem for the young
Liessin, but it was tough going with Russian.
At one point Liessin disappeared for several weeks. One morning he arrived with a fat book under
his arm and said that he had already mastered Russian. The book was Yehoshua Shteynberg’s
[Russian-Hebrew] dictionary and, over the few weeks, he had learned the entire
dictionary by heart. His path into
poetry and socialism was simultaneous, as both would be forced out of one deep
interior source in him. Of course, the
fount of a poem trickled out in his childhood years, when he wrote Hebrew
verse. But that poem of his in Hebrew
was social, and Dr. Iser Ginzburg in his memoirs adduced three-stanzas of a
poem that remained vaguely in his memory and Liessin himself helped him assemble
them (the manuscript of the poem had been lost). In a pair of stanzas, the child-poet sings of
his mother Rokhl who is crying at the exile of her sons. Later, though, when writing poetry was no
longer a game but an assignment, they began to flow from a socialist source
which, in essence, was profoundly Jewish for Liessin. In his Zikhroynes
un bilder (Memories and images), published by “L. M. Shteyn
Folks-biblyotek” (L. M. Stein People’s Library), Liessin wrote:
Does the
rain have a father?—Job once asked.
Revolutionary zeal that burns so wondrously on the Jewish street surely
has its fathers—the prophets, the midrashim, the great and ardent expectations
for the Messiah. One might certainly
ask: Why did these same prophets and these same messianic expectations find no
revolutionary expression on the Jewish street a hundred years ago, even a
decade ago, and can offer interesting explanations for this. However, without the prophets and without the
anticipation of the Messiah’s coming, it would be very difficult to explain
why, for example, in Minsk at one and the same time young Jewish cobblers were
able to organize easily, and nothing at all was able to be done with the young
gentile cobblers.
This thought ripened very early
for him, and he was his guide in socialism, in poetry, and in journalism. At Blumke’s kloyz (house of study, yeshiva) in Minsk, on Friday evenings,
nine-year-old Avreml heard stories of Russian revolutionaries, and “I was
standing next to my father’s lap, a nine-year-old boy, devouring these stories.” At the same time, however, he discover on his
father’s shelf of religious works texts which recounted “the great martyrology
of Jewish history—burning tides of Jewish tears and blood, bundled up in old,
yellowing pages.” Although he had a
sharp mind and grasped the most difficult Talmudic topics, he noted nonetheless
that “my thinking was not with the legal minds of Sura and Pumpedita and Nehardea,
but with the martyrs of Mainz and Worms and Toledo.” The emotions aroused in him in his early
youth exceeded his extraordinary learning capacities. He recounts how the tales of revolutionaries
that he heard in Blumke’s kloyz mixed
together with those of Jewish martyrs, “and in the story about the teacher, the
socialist who went to shoot the Kaiser and had in his pocket a nut with poison
ready for himself should he be caught, I felt the same shiver that I had felt
in the old Jewish chronicles. I found
the sanctification of the name painful.”
In Vilna, where the young Avrom Valt became acquainted with
revolutionary circles, he began to develop his own ideas about socialism—a
Jewish socialism. He did not join the
propagandist circles, remaining among the unaligned, and while the others “had
a distinctive weakness for Russian peasants and laborers, Liessin was drawn to
Jews” (M. M. Rozenboym). At one time he
even thought of retiring to Talmud and commentators, becoming a rabbi, and
campaigning for socialism among Jews as a rabbi. This took place in his Vilna period. Later, after he had already returned to
Minsk, he led an ideological war with the local socialist propagandists. He complained: “How can you approach Jews
like a stranger with gentile books?
Approach them as one of their own, with Jewish literature, and you will
accomplish much more.” In Vilna he had
students with whom he taught socialism in his own manner. When he returned to Minsk, he expanded his
circle of students, and before the Bund came into existence, there was the
circle of “Valtovtses” (followers of Valt [Liessin])—the Jewish-socialist
circle for which Liessin served as spiritual father. In his later years, Liessin almost never
spoke at any meetings, but in Vilna and, mainly, in Minsk he was an orator, an
ardent propagandist for his ideas. Everyone
who remembered that period in Liessin’s life recount how he literally roused
his followers with his speeches which were delivered in a fine Yiddish, full of
imagination and vehement temperament. At
the same time, he began to write poetry in Yiddish, and he read them aloud
before people nearby, and soon they spread through revolutionary circles of
that era. People read, declaimed, and
learned them by heart, and many of them were set to melodies and sung. And, with alacrity an entire booklet of his
poems was assembled, and the manuscript made its way in secret throughout the
city of Minsk, even reaching as far as other cities, from which both
intellectuals and ordinary workers drew encouragement and enthusiasm for his
new revolutionary ideas. He remained independent
in his own socialist path. While in the
Jewish labor movement of the early 1890s there arose the so-called “opposition”
under the leadership of Avrom Gordon (Rezchik), Liessin was especially strongly
affected by Jewish workers; he added a specific hue to the “opposition”:
embracing its slogans (not moving the movement from “economism” to political
agitation), and by the same token he also made use of the slogan of struggling
against assimilated cosmopolitanism which dominated the Jewish labor movement;
and he demanded that the movement be “ethnicized,” meaning that it should
always take in consideration the specific conditions of the life of the Jewish
masses. In 1895 and early 1896 in Minsk,
numerous strikes were brewing. At first
Liessin held that the Jewish householder was himself someone oppressed, that he
was a poor man and that he may have suffered no small amount, like the laborer
who worked for him. He later expressed
this thought in his classic song “Der hundertster kremer in gas” (The 100th
shopkeeper on the street)[1]—a
song that is sung till this day. As he
noted at the time, the economic fight had of course to be pursued, but the
Jewish laborer would only be liberated through the liberation of the Jewish
people; and the Jewish people would without a doubt suffer a great deal from a
revolutionary struggle. One could even
expect pogroms. In his memoirs of Minsk
at that time, M. Ivenski recounts that Liessin said in his propaganda: “Our
duty is to see that workers should only keep in mind their own economic
interests, and the Jewish people of whom the poor comprise the greatest portion
suffered more than all peoples in the world.
As they will suffer even more for taking part in revolution, this
martyred people should be liberated first.”
In the early 1890s political Zionism had begun to spread through cities
and towns, and Liessin, who was attentive to all issues of the day, rejected
Zionism in his debates and in his sarcastic poems. He carried around with him romantic Zionist
ideas, while he did not believe in the actual possibility of those ideas, and
he therefore fought them no less than the Jewish revolutionaries from within whom
emerged the Bund. Years later, when he
was in the United States, he was one of the first Jewish socialists to accept
Zionism, and in his journalism he spiritedly—characteristic of his
temperament—applauded every accomplishment of the pioneers in the land of
Israel and of political Zionism.
Liessin
came to the United States in 1896 and soon joined the social democratic faction
which had fought a bitter struggle against Daniel De Leon and his followers in
the Socialist Labor Party (SLP). He was
one of the first contributors to the Forverts
(Forward), in which he published his poems and journalistic articles. He also wrote editorials for the newspaper,
mainly on the eve of holidays, and he led (using the name “Dr. Iks”) a
ferocious campaign against both De Leon’s daily newspaper Abend-blat (Evening newspaper) and the Orthodox daily Yidishes tageblat (Jewish daily
news). When Ab. Cahan became editor of
the Forverts, Liessin cooled toward
the newspaper. His break with the paper
came when Cahan rejected an article of his against Zionism. Liessin then left the newspaper and for a
time suffered from considerable want. He
supported himself selling newspapers on the street and from other lines of
work. Even when he was working at the Forverts, his economic situation was
very severe. Max Fayn describes how in
the morning he would enter Liessin’s room on Cherry Street, take the editorial
from him that he was to have published that very day, find him there half
dressed; the bed his writing table, and kneeling, leaning over the bed and writing. But when the socialist public of that era
demanded their suffering writer back, the editorial board bent to the will of
the people and recalled the repudiated Liessin.
To be sure, Cahan also had to publish the anti-Zionist article by
Liessin, and the public quieted down.
When Cahan left the Forverts,
Liessin helped L. Miller edit the newspaper, and in 1902, when Miller parted
ways with the newspaper, Liessin edited it (with William Edlin). At that time he was publishing historical
monographs, stressing the heroic chapters in Jewish history, to undercut B.
Faygenboym’s assimilationist propaganda.
After the Kishinev pogrom (Passover 1903), he launched a spirited
campaign in the newspaper on behalf of the Bund. With flaming momentum, he expressed in this
article the notion that Jews must be revolutionaries, but they must also bear
responsibility for one another. He was a
delegate to the seventh congress of the Bund in Lemberg in later summer 1906,
and there he demanded a more positive stance on Jewish ethnic issues. He was the fiercest fighter in the Bund for
“neutralism” on the nationality question.
The Bund at the time offered to publish a book of essays by him. He agreed and assembled the book, but the
editorial board of the Bundist publishers rejected several of the essays for being
too nationalistic, and Liessin thus withdrew the book, although it had already
been typeset. At the end of the
nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth, his journalistic work was
like an invigorating, raging rain on a dry summer day. In Jewish socialism of that time period, his
journalism was literally revolutionary with the themes of Jewish populism, the
great esteem for Jewish tradition, and its enthusiasm for Jewish national and
historical values. His poetic talent
also began to develop in America, as if a fresh, creative source opened in him
in the land of immigrants. So began the
period of creating heroes in Jewish history which remained essential to his
poetic course. At the time when the
Yiddish poem—especially the epic, narrative poem—was still the reigning form
for full expression, Liessin’s poems were linguistically and vividly full. They poetically carried through the idea that
the poet conceived. In their complex,
ideological thematic, Liessin introduced purity, narrative dramatism, and train
of thought that common readers understood and experienced. Many of his poems became the chant of the
Jewish revolutionaries on their way to Siberia and on the cold, Siberian
steppes. His nationalistic poems also
became popular, mainly songs of historical Jewish heroes. They were declaimed at conferences and served
as a source of enthusiasm for the great Jewish past. Over the course of several years, Liessin
wrote no poems—a kind of spiritual, poetic crisis transpiring within him—as he
was searching for a new means to express in poetic form the ideas fermenting in
him. When he began to write poetry once
again, one senses in them a kind of renewal—both in form and in the language
itself. He returned to poetry loaded with
fresh expressiveness which he had been incubating during his years of
silence. In his personal life, Liessin
was not destined to enjoy much happiness.
In 1901 he married the beautiful, highly intelligent Libe Ginzburg, who
hailed from a rabbinical family in Smorgon (Smarhon). She was learned in Jewish matters, but she
had also in her early youth begun to study secular subjects. She was involved early on in the socialist movement,
and at the beginning of the twentieth century she was compelled to immigrate to
the United States, so as to avoid falling into the clutches of the Tsarist
police. Liessin met Libe Ginzburg in New
York, and they were married. They gave
birth to a daughter, Rokhl, who was half paralyzed and suffered from an
enlarged head. Libe died in 1912, and
after her death Liessin was virtually cut off from the world. He looked after his sick daughter himself,
and although she never attended any school, she was quite intelligent; she
wrote and read and enjoyed a broad acquaintance with Yiddish literature. Concerning his personal life, Liessin wrote
one of his most profoundly sad poems: “Dos glik zikh optsuzogn fun glik”
(Happiness refuses to be happy). He led
his life like a recluse, rarely attended public meetings, and lived with his
books and with his creative work. In
1913 he took over the editorship of the journal Di tsukunft (The future) and all but ceased writing for Forverts. With zeal he threw himself into the work of
editing the journal, and over the course of eight months the circulation grew
from 4,000 to over 20,000. He attracted
to the journal the most eminent Yiddish writers in America and Europe. He encouraged young writers, published them,
and even instructed them in a fatherly manner to emend a poem or a story. Under his editorship Di tsukunft became the center of Yiddish literature in all its
forms and expressions. Socialism assumed
an honored place in the journal. At the
same time, he also published in it research works on Judaism and Jewish
history. He inspired writers of a
variety of ideologies to publish their writings in the journal. He published an editorial himself every
month, which was replete with tremblings of the times, with pathos, and with
great erudition. Also, in most every
issue he published a poem of his, and in Di
tsukunft was published virtually all of his poetic creations from 1913
until the final days of his life.
Although he went almost nowhere himself, there was an open door for
writers and painters. Just as he was a
quiet bibliophile and his private library was one of the richest, so too he was
a collector of works of art. He never
accepted presents from artists, paying generously for a painting, and his home
was a small museum of paintings and sculpture.
The more he became engrossed in Jewish history and the heroic images he
drew from it, the closer he came to the notion of a national Jewish
revival. He did not become a Zionist,
but with love and exaltation he wrote about the pioneers in the land of Israel
and even about the political developments within Zionism. In the last years of his life, he carried
around the dream of writings a series of poetic dramas on the messianic
idea. To those close to him, he confided
his dream. He was himself a harmonious
mixture of steadfast physicality and high spirituality, and the heroic figures
from Jewish history were also body and spirit blended together in heroism. In the poetic images that he created, there
was a great deal of dramatism, and he sensed within himself the strength to
embody the dramatism of Jewish history in dramas which he conceived and never
staged. After the March Revolution in
Russia (1917), for several months he sided with the Kerensky regime, though
later when he saw how the regime vacillated and was incapable of making up its
mind to rule the land with a firm hand and handle foreign politics, he began to
support the Bolsheviks. He did not
become a Bolshevik ideologically, but held that a steady Bolshevism and not the
lax Kerensky would save the revolution.
He was, though, soon thereafter disappointed with Bolshevism, and
especially with Communism, which spelled the full destruction of Jewish life in
Russia. He fought bitterly against this
disappointment in the Russian Revolution.
His last years, when Di tsukunft
began to drop in circulation and the Forverts,
which published the journal, wanted to wash its hands of it, were tragic for
Liessin. He obstinately brought his
influence to bear on the leaders of the Forverts,
that the journal ought not be discontinued or diminished. Di
tsukunft had become for him a great spiritual fortress which he had built
with so much love. The diminution of the
journal was for him a diminution of his person.
He relied on his young colleague, B. Vladek, who was for years the
manager of the Forverts. Vladek saved the journal from collapse on
several occasions, and when Vladek suddenly died in late October 1938, his
death was a shocking tragedy for Liessin.
In the week between Vladek’s death and his own, Liessin wrote a moving
elegy, but he did not live to see it published.
Saturday morning, November 5, the poet of Jewish heroism and refined
Jewish socialism departed this world.
His
books include: Moderne lider (Modern
poetry) (Minsk, 1897), 54 pp., hectographically printed, illegally, by the “Group
of Social Democrats” in Minsk (a rare copy of this booklet may be found in the
Bundist archive in the name of F. Kurski in New York); Di militerishe intervenshon in rusland
(Military intervention in Russia) (New York, 1918), 15 pp. (a publication of
the Jewish International Socialists in America); Lider un poemen, 1888-1938 (Poetry, 1888-1938), three volumes, with
drawings by Marc Chagall and a foreword by Hillel Rogof (New York, 1938), vol.
1, 351 pp., vol. 2, 342 pp., vol. 3, 354 pp., with a preface by Liessin and a
chronological arrangement of Liessin’s poems from 1888 until his last one,
“Baym ruder a geshmidter” (Shackled to the rudder) and the unfinished poem
“Yanai hameylekh un di prushim” (King Yannai and the Pharisees); Zikhroynes
un bilder (Memories
and images), with biographical-critical notes (New York: L. M. Shteyn
Folks-biblyotek, 1954), 310 pp., including his youth, subsequent years in
Russia, images and portraits, and more.
A portion of his letters, such as twenty-one letters to John Mill,
written over the years 1917-1937, were published in Unzer tsayt (Our times) (New York) (February-March 1941); three
letters to B. Rivkin in Yidishe shriftn
(Yiddish writings) (New York) 7.1 (1944); and one letter in Yiddish from Hayim
Nachman Bialik to Liessin, published in Ilustrirte
literarishe bleter (Illustrated literary leaves) (Buenos Aires) (1954). Liessin’s poems also appeared in the following
anthologies: M. Basin, 500 yor
yidishe poezye (Anthology,
500 years of Yiddish poetry) (New York, 1917); Amerike in yidishn vort (America in the Yiddish word), anthology
(New York, 1955); and the Hebrew-language Al
naharot (To the rivers) (Jerusalem, 1956); among others. He was a regular contributor to Kh. Y.
Minikes’s Yontef bleter (Holidays
sheets) (New York) from 1901 to 1924.
His essay on Eugene V. Debs was published in Oysderveylte shriftn (Selected writings) of Eugene Debs (New York, 1926).
On the fortieth anniversary of his literary activity in 1936, a double
issue of Di tsukunft was published
(February-March), edited by Hillel Rogof, with essays by seventy-five writers
(many of the articles were fragments of longer works and monographs about
Liessin). On the third anniversary of
his death (1941), a collection of articles about Liessin by various Yiddish
writers appeared, assembled by Yudel Mark: A. lisin, tsum 3tn yortsayt (A. Liessin, on his third yortsayt) (New
York: Tsiko), 47 pp.
“Abraham Walt,”
from Hutchins Hapgood,
The Spirit of the Ghetto
Sources:
Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2, with
a bibliography; D. Ignatov, Shriftn
(Writings), vol. 1 (New York, 1912); Yankev Milkh, in Der pinkes (Vilna) (1913), pp. 202-30; Milkh, Di antshteyung fun
“forverts” (The rise of the Forverts) (New York, 1936); Aleksander
Harkavy, in Di tsukunft (New York)
(April 1914); M. Olgin, in Di tsukunft (July
1915; April 1919); B. Y. Byalostotski, in Di
tsayt (New York) (February 25, 1921); Byalotsotski, Lider un eseyen (Poems and essays) (New York, 1932), pp. 79-130; Byalostotski, Kholem un
vor, eseyen (Dream and reality, essays) (New York, 1956), pp. 214-95; M.
Winchevsky, in Di tsukunft (July
1921); Dr. N. Sirkin, in Di tsayt
(July 16, 1921); Vladimir Medem, in Di
tsukunft (August 1921); R. Abramovitsh, in Di tsukunft (December 1922; December 1924); Gina Medem, in Di tsukunft (March 1923); Y. Entin, Yidishe poetn (Yiddish poets), vol. 2
(New York); Entin, in Idisher kemfer
(New York) (May 22, 1948); Entin, in Di
tsukunft (February-March 1953); Bal-Makhshoves, in Di tsukunft (August 1928); Y. Kreplyak, in Di tsukunft (September 1928); A. Litvak, in Der veker (New York) (November 2, 1929); Litvak, in Di tsukunft (December 1931); Khayim
Krul, Arum zikh (Around itself) (Vilna, 1930), pp. 8-9; Sh.
Ogurski, in Tsaytshrift (Minsk) 4
(1930), p. 249; Dr. A. Ginzburg, in Di
tsayt (July 17, 1931); Moyshe Shtarkman, in Yivo-bleter (Vilna) 4 (1932), pp. 354-87; Y. Bronshteyn, Problemen
fun leninishn etap in der literatur-kentenish (Problems of the Leninist
stage in literary knowledge) (Minsk, 1932), pp. 9ff; Dr. A. Mukdoni, in Morgn-zhurnal
(New York) (October 10, 1934); Mukdoni, In varshe un in lodzh (In Warsaw and in Lodz), vol.
1 (Buenos Aires, 1955), see index; Shmuel Niger, in Tog (New York) (May 5, 1935; December 17, 1935); Niger, in Foroys (Warsaw) (August 4, 1939); Niger,
in Algemeyne entsiklopedye (General
encyclopedia), "Yidn H" (New York, 1957), pp. 114ff; H. Rogof, in Forverts
(New York) (June 23, 1935; December 19, 1948); M. Nadir, in Morgn-frayhayt (New York) (August 31,
1935); B. Grobard, A fertlyorhundert, esey vegn der yidisher literatur in amerike (A quarter century,
essay on Yiddish literature in America) (New York, 1935), see index; Sh. Klitenik, Verk un shrayber (Works
and writers) (Moscow, 1935), pp. 160ff; B. vladek-bukh (B. Vladek
volume) (New York, 1935), pp. 316-64; Sh. D. Zinger, in Der veker (April
25, 1936); Zinger, Dikhter un
prozaiker, eseyen vegn shrayber un bikher (Poets and prose writers, essays
on writers and books) (New York, 1959), pp. 9-13; B. Rivkin, in Idisher kemfer (April 24, 1936; July 24,
1936); M. Shveyd, in Idisher kemfer
(June 30, 1938); D. Pinski and Leyb Glants, in Idisher kemfer (November 11, 1938); M. Ribalov, in Hadoar (New York) (November 11, 1938;
December 9, 1938); Khayim Leyb Fuks, in Nayer
folksblat (Lodz) (November 16, 1938); D. Eynhorn, in Foroys (November 25, 1938); E. Almi, in Der veg (Mexico City) (December 3, 1938); M. M. Rozenboym, in Idisher kemfer (December 8, 1940); Y. A.
Bronshteyn, Impresyes fun a leyener (Impressions of a reader)
(Chicago, 1941), see index; Eliezer Grinberg, Moyshe-leyb
halpern in rom fun zayn dor (Moyshe-Leyb Halpern in the context of his
generation) (New York, 1942); Elye Shulman, Geshikhte fun der
yidisher literatur in amerike (History of Yiddish literature in America)
(New York, 1943), pp. 200-6; Y. Y. Vohl (Jacob Joseph Wohl), Bishete reshuyot (By two authorities)
(New York, 1944), see index; Mortkhe Yofe, in Hadoar (May 23, 1947); Yofe, in Letste
nayes (Tel Aviv) (December 11, 1953); F. Kurski, in Fraye arbeter-shtime (New York) (November 12, 1948); Kurski, in Gezamlte shriftn (Collected writings)
(New York, 1952), pp. 323-41; D. Kaplan and Avrom Reyzen, in Forverts (December 19, 1948); Alter
Epshteyn, in Tog (December 25, 1949);
Yankev Fikhman, Regnboygn (Rainbow) (Buenos Aires, 1953), pp. 240-41;
Y. Kisin, Lid un esey (Poem and essay) (New York, 1953),
pp. 157-64; Kh. Sh. Kazdan, in Kultur un
dertsiung (New York) (November 1, 1953); Kazdan, in Foroys (Mexico City) (January 1, 1955); Y. Pat, in Letste nayes (December 4, 1953); R.
Ayzland, Fun undzer friling (From our spring) (New York, 1954),
pp. 195-217; Y. Y. Sigal, in Keneder
odler (Montreal) (February 26-March 1, 1954); Leo Finkelshteyn, Loshn yidish un yidisher kiem, eseyen
(The Yiddish language and Jewish survival, essays) (Mexico City, 1954), pp.
267-76; A. Leyeles, in Tog (August
21, 1954); Shloyme Bikl, in Di tsukunft
(December 1954); Zalman Shazar, Or ishim
(Light of personalities) (Tel Aviv,
1955), pp. 195-207; B. Shefner, Novolipye
7, zikhroynes un eseyen (Nowolipie 7, memoirs and essays) (Buenos Aires,
1955), see index; Y. Rodak, Kunst un
kinstler (Art and artist) (New York, 1955), pp. 56-57; L. Shpizman, in Geshikhte fun der tsienistisher
arbeter-bavegung fun tsofn-amerike (History of the Zionist labor movement
in North America), vols. 1 and 2 (New York, 1955), see index; Yankev
Glatshteyn, In tokh genumen (In
essence) (New York, 1956), pp. 42-47; Sh.
Sreberk, Zikhronot hamotsi laor
(Memoirs of a publisher) (Tel Aviv, 1954), pp. 119ff; V. Grosman, Amol un haynt, zikhroynes un gendanken (Then and now, memories and thoughts) (Paris, 1955), pp.
179-80; H. Royznblat, in Idisher kemfer
(March 23, 1956); Z. Vaynper, in Yidishe
kultur (New York) (March 1956); N. Mayzil, in Noente un eygene, fun yankev dinezon
biz hirsh glik (Near and one’s
own, from Yankev Dinezon to Hirsch Glick) (New York, 1957), pp. 83-94; Di geshikhte fun bund (The history of
the Bund), vol. 1 (New York, 1960), pp. 72, 94, 100; L. Khanukov, Literarishe eseyen (Literary essays)
(New York, 1960), pp. 24ff; G.
Pomerants, in Der idisher zhurnal
(Toronto) (August 22, 1960); Y. Yeshurin, in Di tsukunft, jubilee issue (New York, 1962); A. A. Robak, The Story of Yiddish Literature (New
York, 1940), pp. 200-1; Y. Ḥ.
Biletzky, Avraham lisin, meshorer, masai,
orekh (Abraham Liessin, poet, essayist, editor) (Tel Aviv, 1981), 29 pp.
Froym Oyerbakh
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