VOLF LESLAU

VOLF LESLAU (November 14, 1906-November 18, 2006)

            He was born in Krzepice, near Częstochowa, Poland.  From 1942 he was living in the United States.  He was a professor of Semitic languages at Brandeis University and later at the University of California, Los Angeles.  In 1950 he did research on the lives of the Falashas in Ethiopia.  He was the author of a series of works in English on eastern Jews, as well as on Ethiopian, Amharic, and Yemenite languages and practices.  In Yiddish he published in Yivo-bleter (Pages from YIVO) in New York (1950), pp. 209-20: “Dos religyeze lebn fun di falashas” (The religious life of the Falasha).  He died in Fullerton, California.

Sources: Yivo-bleter (New York) (1950), pp. 6, 309; information from Dr. Shloyme Nobl in New York.

Khayim Leyb Fuks