ZINE RABINOVITSH (ZINA RABINOWITZ)

ZINE RABINOVITSH (ZINA RABINOWITZ) (1895-June 25, 1965)

            She was a Hebrew and Yiddish writer, born in Bender, Bessarabia.  She graduated from middle school and later studied at Moscow University.  She lived in the land of Israel, 1913-1914, whence she returned from the Soviet Union after WWI.  In 1921 she came to New York and worked there as a Hebrew teacher in Talmud Torahs.  She frequently traveled through various countries.  In 1961 she settled permanently in Israel.  She began publishing in 1918 with poems and stories in Hashiloaḥ (The shiloah).  She wrote mostly in Hebrew.  In Yiddish she published stories, children’s tales, and reportage pieces from her travels in: Dos idishe folk (The Jewish people), Tog (Day), Tsukunft (Future), and Kinder-zhurnal (Children’s journal), among other serials.  In book form: Afn veg tsu frayhayt (On the road to freedom), a novel about the Holocaust and illegal aliya (Buenos Aires, 1950), 359 pp., in Hebrew as Baderekh leḥerut (Tel Aviv, 1961/1962), 372 pp.; Uri fun rames hakovesh, maysele fun yisroel (Uri from Ramat Hakovesh, a story from Israel) (Buenos Aires, 1950), 32 pp.; Der zeyger ruft (The clock calls) (Mexico City: Yidish bukh, 1958), 62 pp.; A mayse mit a shtekele (A story with a little wand) (Mexico City: Yidish bukh, 1958), 63 pp., in Hebrew as Maase bemakel (New York, 1960), 44 pp.; Der liber yontef (The lovely holiday) (New York: Matones, 1958), 196 pp.  “In Zine Rabinovitsh’s stories,” wrote Shloyme Saymon, “there are no clichés in the least from those hackneyed children’s tales.  [She] recounts realistic lives rich with events, heroism, spiritual valor, and physical courage.”  She died in Tel Aviv.

Sources: Getzel Kressel, Leksikon hasifrut haivrit (Handbook of Hebrew literature), vol. 2 (Merḥavya, 1967); Shloyme Saymon, in Fraye arbeter shtime (New York) (September 1, 1959); Akiva Ben-Ezra, in Demuyot (Characters) (Tel Aviv, 1977/1978), pp. 142-46.

Ruvn Goldberg