YUDE KOYFMAN

YUDE KOYFMAN (May 31, 1886-February 23, 1976)

            He was born in Balte (Balta), Ukraine.  He went by the adopted name of Even-Shmuel.  He studied in the yeshivas of Kishinev, Balta, and Odessa.  From 1905 he was studying at the Universities of Brussels, Paris, London, and Montreal whence he arrived in 1913.  In 1918 he received his doctoral degree from Dropsie College.  He was the first director of the Yiddish-Hebrew teachers’ seminary in New York, where he lived from 1917 until 1926, at which point he made aliya to the land of Israel.  He was a researcher in the field of Jewish philosophy, but he wrote all of his books in Hebrew.  In Yiddish he published only in newspapers and periodicals: Keneder odler (Canadian eagle), R. Brainin’s Der veg (The way), and Di kemfer shtime (The fighter voice).  He edited the weeklies Dos vort (The word) and Dos folk (The people)—in Montreal.  In the Yiddish press he published articles on Zionism and general Jewish topics, literary essays, and on Jewish education.  He died in Jerusalem.

Source: G. Kressel, Leksikon hasifrut haivrit badorot haaḥaronim (Handbook of modern Hebrew literature), vol. 1 (Tel Aviv, 1965).

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), cols. 480-81.