YESHAYE GOLDSHTEYN

YESHAYE GOLDSHTEYN (1882-October 6, 1944)

            He was born in Belz, into a family of a Hebrew teacher.  He received a traditional Jewish education.  He later graduated from a secular Russian high school in Zhitomir.  For a long period of time he lived in Odessa.  He was director of the Hebrew high school in Markulesht’, Bessarabia, where he lived until 1918.  At the recommendation of Yankev Fikhman, he was later named director of the Hebrew high school in Baku.  In 1920, while the Bolsheviks were persecuting the Hebrew school system in Russia, he escaped to Palestine and for a time lived in the colony of Mishmar Hayarden, but because his illness might turn into malaria, he was compelled to leave the country.  Until 1930 he lived in Warsaw and for a time in Western Europe.  In 1930 he emigrated to Argentina, and initially he worked in the Jewish bank in Córdoba.  At the same time he was active in the community.  He edited the journal Di vokh (The week) (Córdoba, 1936-1937).  In early 1940 he settled in Buenos Aires and was until his last days professor of Hebrew language and literature at the Hebrew teachers’ seminary, which he had founded.  He authored a number of works in Yiddish and Hebrew, mainly textbooks for the Yiddish and Hebrew school systems in Argentina.  Among them: Unzer geshikhte (Our history) (Buenos Aires, 1934), 100 pp.; Ivrit ḥaya (Hebrew lives) (Buenos Aires, 1937), 64 pp.; Dugmaot, sefer limud hasifrut haatika (Examples, textbook in the ancient literature) (Kishinev, 1928), 64 pp.  Goldshteyn was also the editor of the only Hebrew magazine in Argentina, Dorem (South), over the years 1938-1944, in which he published articles on Yiddish and Hebrew literature and history.  He died in Buenos Aires.

Sources: Sh. Rozhanski, Dos yidishe gedrukte vort un teater in argentine (The published Yiddish word and theater in Argentina) (Buenos Aires, 1941), pp. 124, 190; Volf Bresler, Antologye fun der yidisher literatur in argentine (Anthology of Jewish literature in Argentina) (Buenos Aires, 1944), pp. 922, 934; Di yidishe tsaytung (Buenos Aires) (October 8, 13, 1944).