LEYBL FELDMAN

LEYBL FELDMAN (June 8, 1896-August 24, 1975)

            He was born in Skopishok (Skapiškis), Lithuania.  In 1910 he moved to South Africa, where he turned to business.  From 1947 he was a member of the administration of the South African Jewish Cultural Federation.  He was a delegate to the Jewish Cultural Federation (IKUF) in Paris in 1937.  In 1964 he visited the state of Israel and wrote up his impressions in a pamphlet.  In book form: Yidn in dorem-afrike (Jews in South Africa) (Vilna, 1937), 148 pp.; Oydtshorn, yerusholaim d’afrike (Oudtshoorn, the Jerusalem of Africa) (Johannesburg, 1940), 48 pp.; Yidn in yohanesburg (Jews in Johannesburg) (Johannesburg: South African Jewish Cultural Federation, 1956), 303 pp.; 100 yor indyer in dorem-afrike, 1860-1960 (One hundred years of Indians in South Africa, 1860-1960) (Johannesburg, 1961), 31 pp.; Motsudi, vi azoy ikh bin gevorn a diment-greber (Motsudi, how I became a diamond miner) (Johannesburg, 1964), 24 pp.; Yisroel vi ikh ze es (Israel as I see it) (Johannesburg, 1965), 18 pp.; Mayn kuk af geshikhte, analitish-historishe esey (My glance at history, an analytic-historical essay) (Johannesburg, 1967), 44 pp.  He died in Toronto, Canada.  A “familiarly written book,” wrote Yankev Shatski of Feldman’s Yidn in yohanesburg, “compiled with much diligence and the love of an old settler there, a merchant who sensed in himself a drive to assemble details concerning the Jewish past in South Africa.”

Sources: Danyel Tsharni (Daniel Charney), in Folks-tsaytung (Warsaw) (September 17, 1937); Charney, in Unzer lebn (Bialystok) (1937); Yankev Shatski, in Yivo-bleter (New York) XL (1957), pp. 259-62; Shatski, in Keneder odler (Montreal) (March 19, 1956); N. Y. Gotlib, in Keneder odler (October 1, 1956); Dov, in Dorem-afrike (Johannesburg) (July 1966).

Yankev Kahan

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), cols. 448-49.]