BEN-TSIEN RASKIN (1880-September 1, 1930)
He was
born in Nyezhne (Nizhyn), Mogilev Province.
He attended yeshivas and a high school in Kiev. From 1905 he was a teacher in Warsaw, one of
the founders there of the first Labor Zionist groups. After leaving Warsaw, he lived for a short
while in Odessa and withdrew from the party.
From 1922 he was living the land of Israel. Raskin’s literary feat was to translate into
Yiddish the well-known epic of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dos gezang fun hayavata (The
Song of Hiawatha) (Kiev: Kiever farlag, 1918), 100 pp. He also translated Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald,
Kalyeṿipeyg, fun estonishn epos (Kalevipoeg, the Estonian epic) (Kiev: Kultur-lige, 1922), 36 pp. He also published several children’s stories
(all with the pen name Uncle Ben-Tsien): Der ber (The bear) (Kiev-St.
Petersburg: Idishe folks-farlag, 1918), 10 pp.; Di hun vos hot gezolt hobn a
kas (The hen that should have had a comb) (Kiev-St. Petersburg: Idishe
folks-farlag, 1918), 13 pp., second printing (Warsaw, 1922). In addition, he published several children’s
stories in Hebrew. His pen name: Feter
Ben-Tsien (Uncle Ben-Tsien). He
died in Tel Aviv.
Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 4; Chone Shmeruk, comp., Pirsumim yehudiim babrit-hamoatsot, 1917-1961 (Jewish publications
in the Soviet Union, 1917-1961) (Jerusalem, 1961), index; Sefer haishim (Biographical dictionary) (Tel Aviv, 1936/1937), p.
616; Yeshurin archive, YIVO (New York).
Berl Cohen
No comments:
Post a Comment