YANKEV TSIDKUNI

YANKEV TSIDKUNI (b. February 21, 1902)

            He was born in Sokhatshov (Sochaczew), Warsaw district, Poland.  He received a traditional and a general education.  In 1924 he made aliya to the land of Israel.  From 1925 he was working with YIVO and from 1946 serving at its representative in Israel.  He was an active collector of humorous publications, cofounder of the Institute for Folklore Research “Yeda am” (Folklore), and the organizer of its first congress in Tiberias.  He organized and cofounded the archive and museum of the labor movement in Israel.  He began writing in Polish with articles on art in the journal Młoda Sztuka (Young art), of which he was also the editor (Warsaw, 1923).  From 1925 he switched to Hebrew and Yiddish.  He placed work in Reshimot (Notes), Yeda am, Davar (Word)—among other items, a long Bialik bibliography—Sukot (Booths), Di goldene keyt (The golden chain), and Maḥanaim (Armies), among others [in Hebrew]; and Yivo-bleter (Pages from YIVO), Yidishe shprakh (Yiddish language), and Yidisher folklor (Jewish folklore), among others [in Yiddish].  Through the Museum for Ethnology and Folklore, he published various pamphlets on the nature of folklore.  He was last living in Jerusalem (since 1950), employed in the Ministry of Labor of the state of Israel.

Sources: D. Tidhar, in Entsiklopedyah leḥalutse hayishuv uvonav (Encyclopedia of the pioneers and builders of the yishuv), vol. 8 (Tel Aviv, 1958), p. 3129; Kearat egozim o elef bediha ubediha, asufat humor be-yisrael (A bowl of nuts or one thousand and one jokes, an anthology of humor in Israel) (Tel Aviv, 1953), see index; Getzel Kressel, Leksikon hasifrut haivrit (Handbook of Hebrew literature) (Merḥavya, 1967), pp. 701-2.

Khayim Leyb Fuks