YANKEV KLATSKIN (JAKOB KLATZKIN)

YANKEV KLATSKIN (JAKOB KLATZKIN) (March 10, 1882-March 26, 1948)

            He was born in Kartuz-Bereze (Kartuz-Bereza).  He authored a series of philosophical works in German and mainly in Hebrew.  He was an extreme Hebraist and opponent of Jewish life in the diaspora.  Nonetheless, he published several philosophical essays in Tsukunft (Future) in New York: on Hermann Cohen, Aḥad Haam, religion and reason, assimilationists and philo-Semitism (9 [1922], 7 [1924], 6 [1925]).  He also published a book in Yiddish entitled Di problemen fun modernem yudentum (The problems of modern Jewry) (Warsaw: Aḥisefer, 1930), 205 pp.—which had appeared earlier in German in three editions.  Neither from the frontispiece, nor from Klatskin’s preface in Yiddish, would one see that this book is a translation, although one can not rid oneself of this doubt, considering the author’s extreme Hebraism.  It is thus worth noting another interesting fact: This book in Yiddish was not published in Hebrew.  Dov Sadan and Getzel Kressel did not know of Klatskin’s Yiddish writings.  He died in Vevey, Switzerland.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1; Getzel Kressel, Leksikon hasifrut haivrit (Handbook of Hebrew literature), vol. 2 (Merḥavya, 1967); Mendl Sudarski, in Lite (Lithuania), vol. 2 (Tel Aviv, 1965), pp. 775-87.

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 486.