MAURICE (YUDE-MORTKHE) FISHBERG

MAURICE (YUDE-MORTKHE) FISHBERG (August 16, 1872-August 30, 1934)

            He was born in Kamenets-Podolsk, Ukraine.  He graduated from a Russian high school.  In 1890 he came to the United States.  In his first years there, he worked as an unskilled laborer, while studying at the same time.  In 1897 he completed his medical studies at New York University, where he later, until his death, was a professor in the medical faculty.  He was a researcher and anthropologist, mainly concerned with the Jewish communities of North Africa.  He was the author of a series of book in the field of anthropology and medicine in English.  Over the years 1894-1902, he was a regular contributor to: Abend-blat (Evening newspaper) in New York; and Arbeter fraynd (Workers’ friend) in London.  He contributed scholarly articles to: Tsukunft (Future), Tsayt-gayst (Spirit of the times), Fraye arbeter-shtime (Free voice of labor), and other Yiddish socialist publications in America and elsewhere.  In Bleter far yidisher demografye statistik un ekonomye (Jewish demography, statistics, and economics) (Berlin-Vilna) 1 (1923), he published “Di rasn-simonim bay yidn” (The racial markers among Jews).  In book form: Di gefar fun di yidishe natsyonalistishe bavegungen in ire fershedine formen (The danger of Jewish nationalist movements in its various forms), a “polemic with the leaders of virtually all Jewish national parties” (New York, 1906), 94 pp.  He died in New York.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3; Dr. K. Farnberg, in Tsukunft (New York) (August 1906); Who’s Who in American Jewry (1926); Yivo-biblyografye, 1925-1941 (YIVO bibliography, 1925-1941) (New York, 1943), no. 707; Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1942), vol. 4, pp. 319-20.

Khayim Leyb Fuks