YANKEV TSOYZMER (JACOB ZAUSMER)

YANKEV TSOYZMER (JACOB ZAUSMER) (December 15, 1868-August 26, 1965)

            He was born in Czernowitz, into a Hassidic scholarly family.  He was raised in the town of Dzikovke, Bessarabia, where his father settled.  From his early youth, he had a special love for studying Tanakh and the Hebrew language, for which he worked a great deal in later years.  He was also a devoted Zionist leader.  In his youth he was a Hebrew teacher, lived for a time in Odessa, later in Akkerman (Bilhorod-Dnistrovs’kyy) and Vinitse (Vinnytsa), and in 1904 he emigrated to the United States and settled in Philadelphia.  There he initially worked as a teacher, but a few years later he went to work for an insurance company.  In his free time, he worked as a committed Zionist and attended to writing.  On the whole, he wrote in Hebrew.  He published his first pieces in Hatsfira (The siren)—a Hebrew translation of Y. L. Perets’s “Der tones” (The fast)—and in Haivri (The Jew).  He later published in twelve other periodicals, among them: Hamelits (The advocate), Haolam (The world), and in later years Hadoar (The mail) and Bitsaron (Fortress) in New York.  After living in the Russian empire, Tsoyzmer maintained close contact with the leading writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and with the leading figures of the Zionist movement, whom he himself followed.  He began writing in Yiddish around 1905.  His “Briv fun filadelfye” (Letters from Philadelphia) was published in St. Peterburg’s Fraynd (Friend) and in New York’s Teglekher herald (Daily herald).  He also placed work in: Di yidishe fon (The Jewish banner) in Brooklyn; Dos yidishe folk (The Jewish people) and Forverts (Forward) in New York; and Di yidishe velt (The Jewish world) in Philadelphia; among others.  Altogether he wrote about 100 articles and essays.  In book form: Beikve hador, reshimot, masot vezikhronot (In the footprints of a generation, notes, essays, and memoirs) (New York, 1957), 375 pp.  In 1964 the Jewish community in America celebrated his ninety-sixth birthday.

Sources: Sh. Z. Ash, in Bitsaron (New York) (Adar [February-March] 1960); Kh. Barkan, in Idisher kemfer (New York) (March 20, 1964); Dr. Shloyme Bikl, in Tog (new York) (February 18, 1961); Sh. L. Blank, in Hadoar (New York) (February 5, 1932); A. L. Berkovits, in Keneder odler (Montreal) (March 27, 1964); Z. Chomsky, in Hadoar (Elul [= August-September] 1965); Ḥ. L. F., in Bitsaron (Av-Elul [= July-September] 1965); Ḥ. L. (Lifshits), in Bitsaron (Kislev-Tevet [= November-January] 1964-1965); A. R., in Hadoar (Shevet 7 [= January 16], 1959 ); Y. Rivkind, in Hadoar (August 10, 1962); Bitsaron (Kislev-Tevet 1964-1965) was devoted to Tsoyzmer’s ninety-sixth birthday.

Yekhiel Hirshhoyt