RIVKE GALIN (1890-August 8, 1935)
She was born in Lekhevitsh (Lyakhavichy), Byelorussia, into a merchant-scholarly
household. At the age of ten, she lost
her mother and was raised by her father.
She studied Jewish and general subject matter in private with tutors and
teachers. She early on became acquainted
with the work of Hebrew and Yiddish writers.
In 1907 she emigrated to the United States. She worked in a factory in New York and
studied in the evenings. She became captivated
by the effervescent, Jewish, spiritual life of this period. Around 1910 she came down with a lung illness
and had to live for a time in a sanitarium in Denver, where she befriended Yehoash. It was at that time that she began writing
poetry and prose. In 1914 in San
Francisco she married the writer and community leader Noyekh Mishkovski. In 1915, for the first time, she published poems
in Progres (Progress) in Los Angeles, and a story in Fraye arbeter
shtime (Free voice of labor) in New York.
In 1915 she and her husband undertook a trip through the Far East. They lived for four years in Harbin, China,
where a significant Jewish settlement had assembled at that time. She worked there as a teacher in Jewish
schools as well as in courses for adults.
She was at the time best known for children’s poems which she wrote
especially for the Jewish schools. A
number of these poems were translated into Russian and published in local
Russian Jewish publications. In 1921 she
left Harbin for Palestine, where she lived for a year. At the end of 1922 she returned to New
York. In the general rise in Jewish
cultural life in the prewar era, she wrote and published a great deal, poems
and stories, in among other serials: Kinderland (Children’s land), Kinder-zhurnal
(Children’s magazine), the children’s sections of the daily Yiddish press, Amerikaner
(American), and Tsukunft (Future)—in New York; Khaver (Friend) in
Vilna; and Grininke beymelekh (Little green trees) in Buenos Aires. Throughout the Jewish world, her poems were
included in readers and textbooks and reissued in local editions for
children. People wrote music to accompany
her poems, and these were sung in the schools and at concerts for
children. Among her books: Taybele
(Little dove), poems (Chicago, 1933), 158 pp., second printing with
illustrations by N. Kozlovski (New York, 1937), 160 pp.; A montshik meydele
(A tiny girl) (Warsaw, 1934), 15 pp., second printing (Warsaw: Kinder-fraynd,
1938), 16 pp. (in 1938 this same press brought out Galin’s booklet, Lider
[Poems], 19 pp.); Lider un dertseylungen (Poems and stories) (New York:
Rivke-Galin-Komitet, 1937), 160 pp. (after the death of the author). In 1925 her only child, Taybele, died at age
six and one-half. After that her already
weak health was completely ruined. She
died in New York.
Sources:
Ezra Korman, Yidishe dikhterins, antologye (Yiddish women poets, an
anthology) (Chicago, 1928); R. Nevadovska, in Tsukunft (February 1934);
D. Mairson, in Tsukunft (December 1935); A. Nairman, in Shikago
(July-August 1935); N. Mishkovski, Mayn lebn un mayne rayzes (My life
and my travels) (New York, 1947), vol. 1, pp. 324-31, and vol. 2, pp. 418, 425,
426-32; Sh. Slutski, Avrom reyzen-biblyografye (Avrom Reyzen bibliography)
(New York, 1956), no. 4806.
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