AKIVA GOLENPOL

AKIVA GOLENPOL (1870-1938)

            He was a Hebrew teacher in the Jewish high school in Vilkomir (Ukmergė), Lithuania, between the two world wars.  He spent some time in the United States.  He was a collector of folklore and a writer on folkloric themes.  He published extremely interest works in Yidishe shtime (Jewish voice) and Folksblat (People’s newspaper) in Kovno, as well as in the Hebrew-language Had lita (Echo of Lithuania).  He made a trip to the United States to find ways to have his work published.  He authored Leksikon hafolklor, sefer hapitgamim (The folklore handbook, proverbs), witticisms, sayings, aphorisms, and the like, drawn from Tanakh, Talmud, and folklore, in Hebrew and Aramaic with Yiddish translation (Kovno, 1936), 180 pp. in large format.  He died in Kovno in his early fifties.

Sources: Yidishe bilder 44 (76) (Riga) (November 1938); Lite (Lithuania), vol. 1 (New York, 1955), see index.