HERSHL (HESHL) RABINKOV

HERSHL (HESHL) RABINKOV (August 23, 1908-1981)

            He was a prose writer and playwright, born in Sosnitse (Sosnytsia), Ukraine. He spent his early youth in Seredyna-Buda in the Chernihiv district. From age twelve he was raised by an uncle in Moscow, where he worked as a bricklayer and later in a print shop, while studying at the same time. After graduating from the literature faculty at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute in 1935, he settled in Birobidzhan where he worked as a teacher of Russian language and literature at the local technical school, as well as a writer and journalist. For a certain amount of time, he worked as deputy editor of Birobidzhaner shtern (Birobidzhn star), and later he returned to pedagogical work. For his successes in this realm, he was given an Award of Honor. He began writing in 1927 with a story published in Der emes (The truth) in Moscow. He went on to publish stories as well as critical essays in the journal Prolit (Proletarian literature) in Kharkov and in Forpost (Outpost) in Birobidzhan (1936-1940), as well as in the almanac Birobidzhan (3 issues, 1946-1948, also its co-editor). He later contributed to Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland) in the 1960s. He dedicated his entire life to the Jewish Autonomous Region in Birobidzhan and wrote extensively about it. The heroes of his writings are remarkable for their love of the region in which they live. He published dozens of long stories and novellas, but not one of them appeared in book form in his lifetime. Along the motifs of his lengthy story “Ruvn burles” (Reuben Burles)—concerning the life of Jews in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century—which was published in Forpost, he wrote a play with the same title which was performed in the Birobidzhan State Theater in 1940. Also performed there was his play In di berg fun krim (In the mountains of Crimea) in 1942. He additionally wrote a novel about Avrom Goldfaden, founder of the Yiddish theater, which was dramatized and staged by the Birobidzhan State Theater. He wrote a great number of critical essays and reviews of books and theatrical performances, as well as a series of works on Sholem-Aleichem and Y. L. Perets. In 1949 he was exiled to a camp in the Gulag “for Jewish nationalism.” After being freed in 1956, he returned to Birobidzhan. His work also appeared in Dertseylungen fun yidishe sovetishe shrayber (Stories by Soviet Yiddish writers) (Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1969), and he penned a posthumous work entitled Nay-shtot (New city) (Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1983), 62 pp., which appeared as a supplement to Sovetish heymland in 1983. He also wrote under the pen name: H. Boyder. He died during a visit to Moscow in 1981.

Sources: Y. M. Budish, Almanakh fun yidishn folksordn (Almanac of the Jewish people’s order) (New York, 1947), pp. 382-84; Y. L. Zhitnitski, A halber yorhundert idishe literatur, makhshoves un eseyistik (A half-century of Yiddish literature, thoughts and essays) (Buenos Aires: Eygns, 1952), p. 63; Y. Emyot, in Yidishe kultur (New York) (January 1958).

Khayim Maltinski

[Additional information from: Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), p. 346.]