SHLOYME-TSVI
SKOMOROVSKI (June 30, 1858-ca. 1921)
He was born in Zhitomir, Ukraine,
where his father operated a bookshop. In
his youth he earned a reputation as a prodigy, at age thirteen entering
rabbinical seminary, at seventeen graduating with a gold medal, and then
continuing his studies in Leipzig where (1879) he received his degree as a
medical doctor. After returning to
Russia, he passed the state examinations and became a doctor in Kiev. In the early 1890s he married the daughter of
a wealthy resident of Vilna, Moshe Rozenson, author of Miḥama veshalom (War and peace), in which he implemented semi-Christian
ideas and propagandized for the notion of one faith for all peoples. For his public opposition to his
father-in-law in the name of traditional Judaism, he was compelled to divorce
his wife, and he returned to Zhitomir, where he served as rabbi for many years. He wrote articles for the Hebrew press, such
as in: Hamagid (The preacher), Hatsfira (The siren), Hamelits (The advocate), and Haasif (The harvest), and in the Russian
Jewish Russkiy Evrey (Russian Jew), as well as in German periodicals. In Yiddish he published the historical essay “Di
gzeyre fun gonta in uman un ukrayna” ([Ivan] Gonta’s evil decree in Uman and
Ukraine), in Sholem Aleichem’s Yudishe
folks-biblyotek (Jewish people’s library) 2 (1889), which included mainly
citations from the Yiddish booklet, “Mayse gedoyle min uman umin ukrayna” (The
great tale of Uman and from Ukraine)—according to specimens from the Asiatic
Museum in St. Petersburg (the booklet was, as is well known, published twice:
in Sedelkov in 1838 and in Vilna in 1845).
He spent his final years in Kiev.
A chapter of his memoirs from Zhitomir (concerning the blind followers
of the Jewish Enlightenment, Yosef Bernshteyn and Moti Perltsvayg) was published
Yevreiskaia letopis’ (Jewish
chronicle) (St. Petersburg) 3 (1924).
Sources:
Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2, with
a bibliography; Reyzen, in Morgn-zhurnal
(New York) (October 5, 1931).
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