YOYSEF (YOSEF, JOSEPH) KLAUSNER

YOYSEF (YOSEF, JOSEPH) KLAUSNER (August 14, 1874-October 28, 1958)

            He was born in Olkenik (Valkininkai), Vilna region.  He was a Hebrew literary researcher and historian.  In the first era of his literary work, he wrote in Yiddish, principally Zionist articles—in Yud (Jew), Gershom Bader’s Yudisher folks-kalendar (Jewish people’s calendar), and Y. L. Perets’s Di yudishe biblyotek (The Jewish library) in 1904.  He wrote Don yoysef nosi hertsog fun naksos, a historish bild (Don Yosef Nasi, Herzog of Naxos, a historical image) (Berdichev: Ezra, 1899), 35 pp.; Moyshe rebeynu (Our leader Moses) (Odessa: Zionist one-kopek library, 1908), 14 pp.; Yerusholaim amol un haynt (Jerusalem past and present), translated by Moyshe Kleynman (London: Zionist people’s library, 1926), 31 pp.  He soon abandoned Yiddish and became one of its sharpest ideological opponents.  He died in Tel Aviv.[1]

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3; Getzel Kressel, Leksikon hasifrut haivrit (Handbook of Hebrew literature), vol. 2 (Merḥavya, 1967); Shmuel Niger, in Yivo-bleter (New York) 39 (1955); N. Grinblat, in Hatekufa (Moscow) (1918), pp. 664-75 (on the language question); Avrom Koralnik, Shriftn (Writings), vol. 2 (New York, 1940), pp. 217-27; Shloyme Bikl, Shrayber fun mayn dor (Writers of my generation), vol. 3 (New York, 1970).

Berl Cohen

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[1] Translator’s note. He wrote voluminously in Hebrew on literature and history, and he was the great uncle of the Israeli novelist and critic Amoz Oz (1939-2018). (JAF)