URI FINKEL (1896-December 5, 1957)
He was a literary scholar, prose author, and
journalist, born in the town of Rakov (Rakaw), Minsk district, Byelorussia, to
a father (Hirsh-Shloyme) who worked as a rabbi and ritual slaughterer and who
dreamt that his son would become a rabbi. He received a traditional Jewish
education, and until age seventeen he studied Talmud as well as general subject
matter. In 1916 he was studying in a polytechnic school in Kharkov, later at
the University of Minsk in the department of linguistics, and he remained separated
for many years from his family, for in 1920 his hometown was annexed into
Poland, while he was in Minsk, and he was for this reason unable to contact his
family. It was even impossible for him to write to his parents, because it was
forbidden to have ties to “bourgeois abroad.” He began his literary work with
an article entitled “Di revolutsye un di yidishe literatur” (The revolution and
Yiddish literature) which appeared in the collection Kunst-ring (Art circle) (Kharkov) 2 (1918). That same year he
contributed to the journal Narodnoie delo
(People’s affairs), run by the bibliographic division. During the Soviet Civil
War, he volunteered to fight at the front. Commissioned by the political administration,
he organized a Yiddish propaganda organ, Okna
rosta (Window for ROSTA [Russian Telegraphic Agency]); and in 1920 he edited
(together with H. Botvinik) the only Red Army daily newspaper in Yiddish, Di komune (The commune) in Minsk. Together
with Nokhum Oyslender, he compiled the volume Avrom goldfadn, materyaln far a byografye (Avrom Goldfaden,
materials for a biography) (Minsk: Institute for Byelorussian Culture, 1936),
104 pp. The authors systematized in the book all the materials on the life and
activities of the founder of the Yiddish theater and made use of a series of
new material, striving mainly to elucidate the period of Goldfaden’s activities
until 1883—namely, until Yiddish theater was banned in Russia. He published a
second work, “Di sotsyale figurn in goldfadens verk” (The social figures in
Goldfaden’s work), in Tsaytshrift
(Periodical) (Minsk) 1 (1927). In 1927 he was appointed as a research student
to the department of literature in the Byelorussian Academy of Sciences in
Minsk. The previous year he became a regular contributor to the Minsk-based Der veker (The alarm), and later to Oktyabr (October), in which among other
items he published articles on Sholem-Aleichem, Hersh-Dovid. Nomberg,
Bal-Makhshoves, and Y. L. Perets, as well as Russian authors. In June 1941 Finkel,
his wife, and their son and younger daughter were all evacuated from Minsk,
while his two older daughters, who had traveled to Rakaw just before the war
broke out to visit their grandfather, were immolated in the town synagogue on
February 23, 1942 together with all the other Rakaw Jews. When Nazi Germany
invaded Soviet Russia, for a time Finkel lived in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, but he
soon volunteered to serve in the Soviet Army. In 1946 he received an award “for
valorous work in the war years.” He also published articles in Moscow’s Eynikeyt (Unity). He was able to
preserve the Jewish community records of Rakaw (1810-1913), which his father rescued
from destruction and which are now housed in the state of Israel. He died in
Minsk.
Original works in book form: Mendele moykher-sforim, kindheyt un yugnt (Mendele Moykher-Sforim, childhood and youth), part 1 (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1937), 220 pp., second improved edition (Minsk: Byelorussian State Publishers, 1939), 203 pp., third edition (Moscow: Emes, 1948), 152 pp.; Sholem-aleykhem (Sholem-Aleichem) (Moscow: Emes, 1939), 308 pp., second edition (Warsaw: Yidish bukh, 1959), 332 pp.—both f these works were also translated into Russian and Byelorussian and aroused considerable interest. Translations in book form: A. Solovev, Oktober revolutsye (October Revolution) (1925); N. M. Nikol'skii, Yidishe yontoyvim, zeyer oyfkum un antviklung (Jewish holidays, their origin and development), with H. Mayzl (Minsk: Byelorussian State Pubishers, 1925), 254 pp.; Geshikhte, di farklasndike gezelshaft der uralter mizrekh di antike velt, lernbukh far der mitl-shul 5ter lernyor (History, pre-class society of the ancient East in the ancient world, textbook for the fifth school year of middle school [original: Istoriia doklassovoe obshchestvo drevnii vostok antichnyi mir, uchebnik dlia srednei shkoly 5-i god obucheniia]) (Moscow: Emes, 1934), 249 pp.
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