YUDE-LEYB LIPSHITS (LIPHSHITZ)

YUDE-LEYB LIPSHITS (LIPHSHITZ) (b. November 12, 1882)

            He was born in the village of Pukhovitsh (Pukhavichy), Minsk district, Byelorussia.  He attended religious elementary school and yeshivas in Bobruisk, Slutsk, and Mir.  He later worked as a private Hebrew teacher in Minsk.  In 1904 he moved to the United States and settled in New York.  He was a teacher there, a director of a yeshiva in Brooklyn, and a merchant.  He traveled for several years through the United States, giving speeches on behalf of the settlement in the land of Israel.  He wrote articles for Hamelits (The advocate) in Odessa, and he later contributed to Hatsfira (The siren) and Der yud (The Jew) in Warsaw-Cracow.  In America he wrote for the New York-based: Yidishe gazetten (Jewish gazette), Tog (Day), Morgn-zhurnal (Morning journal), and Yidishes tageblat (Jewish daily newspaper) in which he was in charge of a column entitled “Shtiklakh un breklakh” (Bits and crumbs).  He edited Brukliner naye tsaytung (Brooklyn’s new newspaper) in 1911.  He co-edited (together with H. Royzenblat) Detroyter vokhenblat (Detroit weekly newspaper) (1916-1917), and (together with Dr. Y. Elfenbeyn) the weekly periodical Di shtime fun folk (The voice of the people) in New York (1932).  In book form: Zikh gefunen, origineler roman fun der idisher nayer tkufe (Found, an original novel of the new Jewish era) (New York, 1927), vol. 1, 352 pp., vol. 2, 357 pp.  The novel is concerned with Jewish life in America and in Tsarist and Bolshevik Russia, as well as in Israel of the pioneers.

Sources: Hadoar (New York) (April 30, 1927); Biblyografishe yorbikher fun yivo (Bibliographic yearbooks from YIVO) (Warsaw, 1928), see index; Dr. Sh. Melamed, in Di idishe velt (Philadelphia) (June 5, 1927); Dr. B. Gitlin, in Keneder odler (Montreal) (June 28, 1927); P. Vyernik, in Morgn-zhurnal (New York) (May 22, 1932).

Khayim Leyb Fuks