TSVI (HIRSH) SAPIR

TSVI (HIRSH) SAPIR

            He was born in Bialystok, Russian Poland.  He studied in religious elementary schools and yeshivas.  Using the name Hershele, he published humorous items in the Bialystok newspapers: Dos naye lebn (The new life) and Byalistoker shtime (Voice of Bialystok), among others.  He also contributed to the jubilee issue of Dos naye lebn in 1929.  He later lived in Warsaw until the Hitler era.  Further information remains unknown.

Sources: Jubilee issue of Dos naye lebn (Bialystok) (April 4, 1929); Byalistoker leksikon (Bialystok handbook) (Bialystok, 1935).

Yankev Kahan

MORITS-GOTLIB (MOYSHE) SAPIR (MORITZ GOTTLIEB SAPHIR)

MORITS-GOTLIB (MOYSHE) SAPIR (MORITZ GOTTLIEB SAPHIR) (February 8, 1795-September 5, 1858)

            He was born in Lovasberény, Hungary.  He received ordination into the rabbinate in Prague, and he later settled in Obuda (Alt-Ofen, a section of Budapest), where he soon became known for his biting satire and his spiritually rich aphorisms which the opposition at the time in the Obuda Jewish community sought to make use of against the community’s leaders.  In 1820, before he debuted in print in German with his Papilloten (Pest, 1921), he wrote in Yiddish a play in two acts entitled Der falsher kashtan (The false Kashtan), a comedy about a wandering cantor who passes himself off as the then celebrated cantor Kashtan and thus fools the community of Obuda.  For a time this comedy circulated in numerous copies among the Jews of Alt-Ofen, but it was not published.  In 1900 for the first time someone named Ben-Eliezer published the comedy in the Hungarian journal Magyar Zsidó Szemle (Hungarian Jewish review).  According to Ben-Eliezer, Sapir was going to publish a second pamphlet: Di falshe katalani (The false Katalani).  Di falshe kashtan was written in Hungarian Yiddish and is full of obscenities, although the comedy possesses a wealth of material for studies of the Yiddish dialect in Hungary.  Sapir later converted to Christianity.  He died in Baden.

Source: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2, with a bibliography.

Benyomen Elis

YOSEF SAPIR

YOSEF SAPIR (April 12, 1869-March 3, 1935)

            He was born in Odessa, southern Russia.  He studied in a public high school and in the Universities of Vienna and Montpellier.  In high school he became a “Ḥovev tsiyon” (Lover of Zion).  In Vienna he belonged to a student group “Kadima” (Onwards).  He was also a member of the Odessa committee of the “lovers of Zion.”  He contributed to Smolenskin’s Hashaḥar (The dawn), and he published in Odessa a religious work entitled Torat haḥaim (The law of life) and stood close to Bialik and Tshernikhovski.  In Odessa he founded “Di kopike biblyotek” (The one-kopek library) which brought out dozens of pamphlets on national and Zionist issues.  He participated in Zionist congresses and was a member of the great Zionist action committee.  At the sixth congress he was at the head of the Odessan “nine speakers” (against the Uganda project).  In Vilna in 1903, he published in Russian the book Sionizm, nauchno-populiarnoe izlozhenie sushchnosti i istorii sionistichestego dvizheniia (Zionism, popular scientific account of the essence and history of the Zionist movement), 198 pp.  It was the recipient of a prize from the Moscow patron Velikovski and appeared in Hebrew and Yiddish translations as well.  He published in Odessa, where he practiced medicine, the Russian Jewish periodicals Evreiskaia misl’ (Jewish thought) and Kadima.  Over the years 1918-1921, at the time of the Ukrainian pogroms against the Jews, he was among the leaders of the relief committee for the Jewish victims.  He moved to Kishinev with the goal of making aliya from there to the land of Israel, but he became secretary there for the Jewish National Fund and revived the Zionist Library.  In 1925 he departed for Israel.  He published articles in Haarets (The land) and Hatsiyoni hakelali (The general Zionist), and he published a book, entitled Ḥalutse hateḥiya (Pioneers of the revival), on Zionist personalities.  He died in Jerusalem.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2; Hadoar (New York) (March 15, 1935); D. Tidhar, in Entsiklopedyah leḥalutse hayishuv uvonav (Encyclopedia of the pioneers and builders of the yishuv), vol. 3 (Tel Aviv, 1949), pp. 1239-40.

Yankev Kahan

DOVID SAPIR

DOVID SAPIR (1892-September 21, 1953)

            He was born in Bialystok, Russian Poland.  He studied in religious elementary schools and in a yeshiva, and secular knowledge he pursued privately.  At age sixteen he departed for the land of Israel, but due to illness he had to leave and returned to Bialystok, where he became a commercial traveler.  From 1919 he published in Bialystok’s Dos naye leben (The new life), edited by P. Kaplan: stories, sketches, impressions, and feature pieces.  In 1927 he published in the same periodical a novel in three parts, “Der dor fun di shvakhe” (The generation of the weak).  Several of his stories were republished in Der idisher zhurnal (The Jewish journal) in Toronto, Canada.  Before WWII he left for the United States.  He died in New York.

Sources: Jubilee issue of Dos naye leben (Bialystok) (April 4, 1929); Byalistoker almanakh (Bialystok almanac) (Bialystok, 1931); Byalistoker leksikon (Bialystok handbook) (Bialystok, 1935); Byalistoker shtime (New York) (April 1954).

Yankev Kahan

A. Y. SAPIR

A. Y. SAPIR

            He came from Minsk.  He was the author of Khates hakool, oder di sheyne drezele (Sins of the community, or the beautiful girlfriend), “a magnificent, extremely moving novel, in two parts” (Vilna: Rozenkrants un Shriftzetser, 1881), 103 pp. and 133 pp., with a preface and a poem in Hebrew; republished several times thereafter, such as in 1888 and 1910.  This bit of Enlightenment sermonizing against the community tax or for reforming the Talmud Torah was drowned in curiosity and awkwardness.  Of Sapir’s other novels is known: Der kleyner katerznik oder der flasher yoysher (The little convict or false justice), “a splendid and extraordinary novel” (Vilna: Avrom-Tsvi Shvintsyaner, 1888, 1895), 48 pp.

Source: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2.

ABE SAPIR

ABE SAPIR (1898-January 19, 1974)

            He was born in Vilna.  He spent WWI in Russia and after the Revolution of 1917 returned to Vilna.  As an active member of the left Labor Zionists, he was arrested by the Polish authorities.  He was one of the organizers of the wind instrument orchestra associated with the Maccabi Gymnastics and Sports Association in Vilna (1924).  In 1931 he organized a regular international art exhibition in Vilna with the participation of thirty-eight Jewish, Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, Byelorussian and German artists.  Over the years 1931-1937, he organized several dozen collective and individual art shows in Vilna, Grodno, Bialystok, and Druzgenik.  For a time he was the manager of Vilner tog (Vilna day) and the editor-publisher of: Kunst un lebn (Art and life) (1923); Vilner literarisher kunst-zhurnal (Vilna literary and art journal) (1924); Di bime (The stage) (1924-1925); Di naye bime (The new stage) (1925); Vilner mitog-blat (Vilna afternoon newspaper) (1925); Lidya pototska, yoyvl-oysgabe tsu der 15-yoriker stseniker tetikeyt (Lidia Potocka, jubilee publication on her fifteen years on the stage) (July 1927), 4 pp.—all in Vilna.  He also published articles in Vilner tog and other newspapers.  His last article was published in Warsaw’s Idisher ekspres (Jewish express) (February 1939).  In the war years he lived in Soviet Russia and worked as a photo reporter for TASS.  He lived later in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he worked as secretary for the cultural department of the Jewish National Fund.  From 1969 he was living in Tel Aviv, where he died.

Sources: LE, in Vilner tog (Vilna) (January 18, 1931); B. Zalkind, in Vilner tog (April 1931); H. Mats, in Vilner almanakh (Vilna almanac) (Vilna, 1939), p. 159; Leyzer Ran, 25 yor yung vilne (Twenty-five years of Young Vilna) (New York, 1955).

Leyzer Ran

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 396.]

MENAKHEM-MENDL SAPOZHNIKOV (SAPOZH)

MENAKHEM-MENDL SAPOZHNIKOV (SAPOZH)

            He came from Russia.  Until the mid-1950s, he lived in New York; thereafter, he left the United States.  He translated tractate Beitzah of the Babylonian Talmud into Yiddish (New York, 1949).  According to the preface to this book, the author had for many years been working on a general translation of the Babylonian Talmud.  Further biographical details remain unknown.

Khayim Leyb Fuks