BERL SENTER

BERL SENTER (1890-1949)

            He came to the United States in his youth.  He earned a degree of doctor of optometry.  He also had a jewelry business, an automobile agency, a real estate office, and a large workshop to repair watches.  He was very active in the Yiddish school movement, mainly in the Sholem Aleichem Folks Institute and the Coney Island Sholem Aleichem Folkshul.  He began writing poems in his early youth.  Around 1907 he published a small notebook of twenty-odd pages, in which M. Y. Khaymovitsh, A. Raboy, and others contributed—the second number of this notebook (32 pp.) came out under the editorship of Yoyel Entin.  Because of all his businesses, he rarely wrote and even more rarely published work.  In book form: Khad-gadye, shpil in eyn akt, prolog un epilog (“An only kid,” a play in one act with prologue and epilogue) (New York: Fraye arbeter-shtime, 1930), 32 pp.; Geklibene shriftn, lider, dertseylungen un dramatishe poemes (Selected writings, poetry, stories, and dramatic poems), with a foreword by Sh. Saymon (New York, 1955), 150 pp.  He died in New York.

Sources: Sr. Sh. Saymon, foreword to Senter, Geklibene shriftn (Selected writings) (New York, 1955); D. Ignatov, Opgerisene bleter, eseyen, farblibene ksovim un fragmentn (Torn off sheets, essays, extant writings, and fragments) (Buenos Aires: Yidbukh, 1957), p. 68.

Leyb Vaserman