MOYSHE FREYLIKHOV (MORRIS FREILICOFF)

MOYSHE FREYLIKHOV (MORRIS FREILICOFF) (October 12, 1886-January 30, 1981)

            He was born in Chernigov (Chernihiv), Ukraine.  At one year old, he moved with his parents to London.  There he received a Jewish and a general education.  In 1900 he founded one of the first Jewish youth clubs in England.  In late 1902 he moved with his parents to the United States.  He settled in Washington, D.C., where in 1911 he completed a degree in law.  He was among the first Labor Zionists in America.  He took part in the Jewish congress movement, in the people’s relief for war victims, and other associations.  He began writing in his youth—poems and articles in English.  He debuted in print in Yiddish with a poem entitled “May” (May) in Kalmen Marmor’s weekly newspaper Der londoner yid (The London Jew) in 1904.  In America he published a series of poems with ethnic revolutionary content in various Anglophone Jewish periodicals—also a pamphlet entitled A Message of Hope (1904) and in Yiddish Dos idishe folk (The Jewish people) in 1913.  From that point he dedicated himself to journalism, especially in Yiddish.  He contributed to: Idisher kemfer (Jewish fighter) (1916-1918), Tog (Day), and Tsukunft (Future) in New York; Der shtern (The star), a Philadelphia anthology; Der idisher arbayter (The Jewish worker) of the right Labor Zionists; and in various English-language Jewish periodicals.  Over the years 1920-1922, he wrote for the daily newspaper Di tsayt (The times).  He also contributed to editing the Zionist socialist writings of Dr. Nakhmen Sirkin.  From time to time, he placed work in: Yugnt (Youth), Pyonern-froy (Pioneering woman), Vanguard, and Kalifornyer idishe shtime (Jewish voice of California) of Los Angeles.  In book form: Dzhuzepo matsini, denker un bafrayer (Giuseppe Mazzini, thinker and liberator) (Washington, 1924), 349 pp.; and Geklibene shriftn (Selected writings) (Atlanta, 1938), 256 pp.; The Builders and Defenders of the Sovereign State of Israel, ed. Deborah Freilicoff Paderofsky (Washington, 2011), 110 pp. (concerning Nakhmen Sirkin).  He died in Bethesda, Maryland.

Sources: Di tsayt (New York) (December 30, 1921); Pinkes (New York) 1 (1927-1928), p. 261; Dr. A. Mukdoni, in Tsukunft (New York) (October 1930; December 1943); Moyshe Shtarkman, in Yorbukh (New York) (1942/1943); Shtarkman, in Idisher kemfer (New York) (March 23, 1956).

Yankev Kahan