AVROM-MORTKHE ROGOVI

AVROM-MORTKHE ROGOVI (1898-August 1942)

            He was an Orthodox journalist, born in Lodz.  He attended religious elementary schools and yeshivas.  He acquired secular knowledge on his own.  He was one of the founders of “Poale Agudat Yisrael” (Workers of Agudat Yisrael) and a member of the Lodz city council.  For a lengthy period of time, he served as secretary of the Jewish community in Velun (Wieluń).  He was greatly interested in religious education.  Confined in the Warsaw Ghetto, he wrote there Gazeta Warszawska (Warsaw gazette).  He gained a great deal of merit for building the Orthodox press in Yiddish and Hebrew in Poland.  Around 1917 he began writing essays for their publications, such as: Dos yudishe vort (The Jewish word) in Warsaw (1916-1919); Der yud (The Jew) in Warsaw (1919-1926), a weekly and later a daily; Ortodoksishe bletlekh (Orthodox sheets); Beys yankev (Beys Yankev); and the anthologies Frihling (Spring), Haderekh (The road), and Deglanu (Our banner).  He edited Di yudishe shtime (The Jewish voice) in Lodz (1923-1925), for a time a weekly and for a time a daily, and the first Orthodox labor newspaper, Der yudisher arbayter (The Jewish worker), organ of “Poale amone-yisrael” (Laborers faithful to Israel), Unzer traybkraft (Our motive force) in Lodz (1926), and co-edited Dos yudishe togblat (The Jewish daily newspaper) in Warsaw (1929-September 6, 1939).  Among other items, he translated the Rambam’s Shemone perakim (Eight chapters) serially in Dos yudishe togblat, Samson Raphael Hirsch’s Horev (Khorev [Mount Sinai]) as Di flikhten fun yudentum (The duties of Jewry) in Der yud, and Pirke avot (Ethics of the Fathers) (Lodz), 44 pp.  A pamphlet: Vos vil banes-agudes-yisroel? (What do the daughters of Agudat Yisrael want?) (Lodz, 1930/1931), 19 pp.  Among his pen names: Uziel, Ben-Yair, A. Davidson, and Ben-David.  He died in Treblinka.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 4; Ela ezkera (These I remember), vol. 3 (Jerusalem, 1959), pp. 63-72; Itonut yehudit shehayta (Jewish press that was) (Tel Aviv, 1973), see index; Yeshurin archive, YIVO (New York).

Yekhezkl Lifshits