YUDE-LEYB KATSENELSON

YUDE-LEYB KATSENELSON (November 29, 1846-January 20, 1917)

            He was a Hebrew writer, known by the pen name Buki Ben Yogli, born in Chernigov, Russian empire.  In addition to articles, feature pieces, and stories, he also wrote research works on medicine in the Talmud.  He was the editor-in-chief of the Russian Jewish encyclopedia.  “In his youth,” noted Zalmen Reyzen, “he composed beautiful poems in Yiddish.  Several of them were later published in one of the Russian Jewish anthologies.”  While he became an opponent of Yiddish, in his last years he returned to the Yiddish language and published stories in Yudishes folksblat (Jewish people’s newspaper) in St. Petersburg.  He translated his most popular story Shirat hazemir (Song of the nightingale) (Warsaw, 1894) from Hebrew into Yiddish as Der solovey zingt (The nightingale sings) (Vilna: Y. Pirozhnikov, 1901), 2 parts.  In Yidishes tageblat (Jewish daily newspaper) in New York (July 19-August 2, 1927), Katsenelson’s long story appeared serially: Tsvey manuskriptn (Two manuscripts), translated by Y. Danovski.  He died in Petrograd.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3; Getzel Kressel, Leksikon hasifrut haivrit (Handbook of Hebrew literature), vol. 2 (Merḥavya, 1967); Yankev Mark, Gedoylim fun unzer tsayt, monografyes, kharakter-shtrikhn un zikhroynes (Great men of our time, monographs, character traits, and memoirs) (New York, 1927), pp. 334-39; D. Frishman, Ale verk (Collected works), vol. 4 (Warsaw-New York, 1938), pp. 142-45; Ruvn Brainin, Fun mayn lebns-bukh (From my book of life) (New York: IKUF, 1946), pp. 341-45; Y. L. Katsenelson, Ketavim nivḥarim (Selected writings) (Merḥavya, 1965), pp. 116-18.

Ruvn Goldberg