MOYSHE KOYFMAN (MOISES KAUFMAN)

MOYSHE KOYFMAN (MOISES KAUFMAN) (November 11, 1908)

            A poet, storyteller, and journalist, he was born in Grodno.  He attended a Yiddish-Hebrew school.  From 1928 he was living in Argentina.  He was a furniture cleaner, later a teacher in a Jewish school.  He debuted in print with a poem in Yugnt-veker (Youth alarm) in Warsaw.  In Argentina he belonged to the group “Nay-velt” (New world).  In 1936 he became an internal contributor and later co-editor of the daily newspaper Morgn-tsaytung (Morning newspaper).  Over the years 1944-1948, he co-edited the monthly Nay-lebn (New life).  From 1955 he was a regular contributor to Di prese (The press) and from 1974 its editor-in-chief.  He published poems, stories, reportage pieces, and articles in the aforecited newspapers, as well as in Nay-yidish (New Yiddish), Hamer (Hammer), Ineynem (Altogether), and Zamlbukh (Collection) (Buenos Aires, 1962), among others.  His work appeared in: Kalmen Marmor’s Revolutsyonerer deklamator, zamlung fun lider, poemes, dertseylungen, eynakters, tsum farleyenen, shipln un zingen bay arbeter-farveylung (Revolutionary declamation, collection of songs, poems, stories, [and] one-act plays to read aloud, enact, and sing for workers’ entertainment) (New York, 1933); D. Kurland and S. Rokhkind’s anthology, Di haynttsaytike proletarishe yidishe dikhtung in amerike (Contemporary proletarian Yiddish poetry in America) (Minsk, 1932); and Antologye fun der yidisher literatur in argentine (Anthology of Jewish literature in Argentina) (Buenos Aires, 1944).  In book form: Arke fun tol, lider un poemes (Arc of the valley, songs and poetry) (Buenos Aires, 1936), 232 pp.; Fun ale mayne heymen (From all of my homes) (Buenos Aires, 1944), 98 pp.  He also went by the pen name: M. Reytses.  “On the one hand, influenced by Soviet poetry, and on the other by Leivick and M. L. Halpern,” wrote Zalmen Reyzen, “he nonetheless possesses his own temperament….  He has his own strength and his own singing blood.”

Sources: P. Kats, Geklibene verk (Selected works), vol. 7 (Buenos Aires, 1947), p. 138; Y. Botoshanski, Mame yidish (Mother Yiddish) (Buenos Aires, 1949), p. 261.

Yoysef Horn