YITSKHOK-NAKHMEN DONSKI

YITSKHOK-NAKHMEN DONSKI (1898-December 30, 1938)

            He was born in Kovno, Lithuania.  He graduated from a high school in St. Petersburg.  He studied philosophy in St. Petersburg and in Berlin.  In 1923 he received his doctor of philosophy degree, and in 1933 he received a Master’s degree in international law from the University of London.  From his earliest years, he was active in the Zionist movement.  He was chairman of the Tarbut Center, and a member of the executive of the “Society to Spread Higher Education among the Jews” and of the “Jewish Historical-Ethnographic Society” in Lithuania, among other positions.  He wrote a number of philosophical works and current events articles in English, Russian, Lithuanian, Hebrew, and Yiddish collections, journals, and newspapers.  He was a contributor to the Yiddish press in Lithuania and in France.  He published in the anthology, Gedank un lebn (Thought and life) (Kovno, 1935), two works entitled: “Der kolektiv un der individ” (The collective and the individual) and “Der rambam un moderne filosofishe problemen” (The Rambam and modern philosophical issues).  He died in Paris.  He left in manuscript a work entitled “Di antshteyung un antviklung funem yidishn tip in der lite” (The rise and development of the Jewish character in Lithuania).

Sources: Yor-ayn, yor-oys (Year in, year out) (Kovno, 1939), pp. 192-93; A Shtaynberg, in Zamlbukh lite (Anthology Lithuania), vol. 1 (New York, 1951), pp. 408, 1111.