KHAYIM-YITSKHOK FARBER

KHAYIM-YITSKHOK FARBER (b. June 2, 1889)

            The younger brother of Kalmen Farber, he was born in the village of Brogishe (Bragishe?), Bessarabia.  He studied with a private tutor.  In 1904 he moved to Argentina, settling in Buenos Aires.  From 1912 he was publishing lyrical and satirical poems, as well as nature descriptions and images from the lives of Jewish colonists, in the weekly newspapers: Der farteydiker (The defender) and Di yugnt (The youth) in Casares; and Avangard (Avant-garde), Blimelekh (Little flowers), Di idishe tsaytung (The Jewish newspaper), and Argentiner beymelekh (Little Argentinian trees) in Buenos Aires.  He also used such pen names as: Sofa, A Shtifer, Itsik Optimist, and Diksi.  He composed roughly 600 children’s poems and 800 fables.  To many of his poems, H. Volotitsh, Leyzer Klotsman, Arn Garishnik, and Leon Dreydl composed music.  In book form, he published: Far briderlekh un shvesterlekh (For little brothers and sisters) (Buenos Aires, 1925), 32 pp.; In a yidisher kolonye (In a Jewish colony), poems for children (Buenos Aires: N. Kaplanski, 1936), 29 pp.; Shlof-lid (Sleep song), music by Gorzhanski (Buenos Aires, 1936), 124 pp.; Fablen (Fables) (Buenos Aires: N. Kaplanski, 1936), 124 pp.; He also translated into Yiddish poems by Ḥaim Naḥman Bialik, Yaakov Fikhman, David Shimoni , and L. Kipnis, among others.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3; Penemer un penemlekh (Buenos Aires) (October 1925); Di idishe tsaytung (Buenos Aires) (December 25, 1935); Morgn-tsaytung (Buenos Aires) (November 28, 1935); Der shpigl (Buenos Aires) (1935); Rozaryer lebn (1935); Di prese (Buenos Aires) (April 1, 1936); Sh. Rozhanski, Dos yidishe gedrukte vort in argentine (The published Yiddish word in Argentina), vol. 1 (Buenos Aires, 1941), p. 168; Antologye fun der yidisher literatur in argentine (Anthology of Yiddish literature in Argentina) (Tel Aviv, 1944), p. 926.

Yankev Kahan