VOLF RABINOVITSH (1864-1939)
He
was born in Pereyaslav (now, Pereyaslav-Khmel'nyts'kyy), Poltava Province,
Ukraine, the younger brother of Sholem-Aleichem. In 1882 he settled in
Berdichev. His whole life he worked as a glove-maker and made a name for
himself as a master of his trade. At exhibitions in Berdichev and Kiev, he was
awarded for his gloves with bronze and silver medals, and at the world
exhibition in Paris in 1900, he received a gold medal. He was selected in 1926
in his hometown as a deputy to the Berdichev city council. Until the last days
of his life, he led a glove-makers’ group in the local cooperative and was one
of the most revered workers—a stakhanovets,
as people at the time dubbed the best laborers—in his city. He held onto
letters written to him over a number of years by his famous brother, and he
included them in his volume of memoirs: Mayn
bruder sholem-aleykhem, zikhroynes (My brother Sholem-Aleichem, memoirs)
(Kiev: Ukrainian State Publishers
for National Minorities, 1939), 233 pp. He attended a
celebratory evening in 1939 in Moscow, commemorating the eightieth birthday of
Sholem-Aleichem. He died in Kiev.
Berl Cohen
[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), pp. 344-45.]
No comments:
Post a Comment