MOYSHE-TANKHUM BER (January 18, 1889-April 17, 1954)
This was the adopted name of Moyshe-Tankhum Berman, born in
Warsaw to Zionist parents. He studied in
religious primary school and graduated from a Russian business school. In his youth he belonged to Socialist
Revolutionary circles, later joining Hashomer Hatsair (Youth guard). In 1925 he moved to Palestine and worked on a
kibbutz. In 1935 he came as an emissary of
the Zionist Organization to Warsaw and worked in its municipal committee. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, he
escaped to Mexico and from there he returned to the state of Israel in
1953. He began writing lyrical and
religious poetry in Hatsfira (The siren) in 1919, and he wrote articles
on Zionism for Badereḥ
(On the road). In Yiddish—he composed
poems and short stories for Der veg (The way) in Mexico, Dorem-afrike
(South Africa) in Johannesburg, and other serials. He authored the booklet Hatsiyonut
vehitgashmuta (Zionism and its realization), which he translated into
Yiddish with the title Der tsienizm un zayn farvirklekhung (Warsaw, no.
4 in the Zionist People’s Library series), 76 pp. He died of a heart attack in Haifa in the
middle of publishing his Hebrew volume of poetry, Yerushalaim
(Jerusalem), a book which included within it his Yiddish poems in Hebrew
translation. He also published under the
name Tanḥum Berman
and Tanḥum Ber.
Sources:
Y. Glants, in Der veg (Mexico) (October 30, 1943); D. Tidhar, in Entsiklopedyah leḥalutse hayishuv uvonav (Encyclopedia of the founders and builders of Israel) (Tel Aviv, 1947-1971), pp. 2598-99.
No comments:
Post a Comment