ZELDE KNIZHNIK

ZELDE KNIZHNIK (b. ca. 1869)

            She was a poetess, born in Vyazyn, Vilna region.  She received a rigorously religious education.  She lived with her husband and daughter for five years in Shatsk, later in Poretsh (Porech).  From time to time, she traveled to Minsk, where she became acquainted with Avrom Reyzen.  She later moved to Briansk (Brańsk), before emigrating to New York.  In her youth she evinced great poetic talent.  Already at age eight, she stunned her town with a Hebrew poem.  She mostly wrote poems in Yiddish, and she published them in Khanike (Chanukah) in Warsaw (1903), Minsker almanakh (Minsk almanac) (1912), Yud (Jew), and Fraynd (Friend).  She published even more poems in Tsukunft (Future) in New York, the last of them in the mid-1930s.  Her work appeared as well in: Yoyel Entin, Yidishe poetn, hantbukh fun yidisher dikhtung (Yiddish poets, a handbook of Yiddish poetry) (New York: Jewish National Labor Alliance and Labor Zionist Party, 1927), vol. 1; Morris Basin, Antologye, 500 yor yidishe poezye (Anthology, 500 years of Yiddish poetry) (New York, 1917); Ezra Korman, Yidishe dikhterins, antologye (Female Yiddish poets, anthology) (Chicago: L. M. Shteyn, 1928); Nakhmen Mayzil, Amerike in yidishn vort (America in the Yiddish word) (New York, 1955); and Shmuel Rozhanski, Di froy in der yidisher poezye (Women in Yiddish poetry) (Buenos Aires, 1966).  Her poems, wrote Zalmen Reyzen, “are folkish in form, excelling in a type of lyrical sensibility, with a restrained, indeed tight tone.”  The majority of her poetry, which could fill entire volumes, remains in manuscript.  Her daughter, BERTA KNIZHNIK, came to the United States in 1910 and published a few poems in Yiddish-language publications.

Sources: Yoyel Entin, Yidishe poetn, hantbukh fun yidisher dikhtung (Yiddish poets, a handbook of Yiddish poetry), vol. 1 (New York: Jewish National Labor Alliance and Labor Zionist Party, 1927), p. 235; Yeshurin archive, YIVO (New York).

Berl Cohen