YITSKHOK-YONE GRINES

YITSKHOK-YONE GRINES

            He was born in Lemberg, son of R. Petaḥya Grines.  He was a teacher of Jewish religion in Lemberg in the latter half of the nineteenth century.  He received a number of awards from the Austrian emperor, apparently for writing florid paeans to Austrian might.  He was also a court translator from Polish, German, and Hebrew, and a “licensed public school teacher, public school teacher of religion and the Hebrew language.”  He was the author of: Der groser veltshpigl frolikhe un ernste forlezungen (The great mirror of the world joyous and serious, lectures) (Cracow, 1889), 56 pp.  This book contained a poem entitled “Al ḥet” (For the sin of…) in verse concerning Yom Kippur and Jewish morality.  A portion of the book was a Yiddish translation of “Unetane tokef” (Let us speak of the awesomeness) prayer.  At one point in the book, the author wrote: “We have here the German language which I have always to correct with zhargon [Yiddish, pej.].”  In this same book, he included a Hebrew poem in acrostic format, a paean to Yiddish as a vernacular language.  He was also the author of a prayer book in Hebrew and German for Jewish soldiers in the Austrian Army, entitled Tefilat anshe ḥayil (Prayers for men of valor), and he should also have published Yiddish pamphlets, such as: Iber kinder ertsiung (On raising children), Der shadkhn (The matchmaker), and the like.  A copy of his Veltshpigl, now a rarity, can be found in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.