AVROM-BER DUBZEVITSH

AVROM-BER DUBZEVITSH (October 17, 1843-January 14, 1900)

            He was born in Pinsk, into a scholarly household.  In 1861 he left for Ekaterinoslav, and in 1874 he settled in Kiev where he worked as a private teacher of Hebrew.  In 1891 he emigrated to the United States, where he suffered from want and was unable from his teaching at the Montefiore Talmud-Torah to support his large family.  Aside from Hebrew, he also knew ancient Semitic languages, and his scholarly work was in the field of critical inquiry of Tanakh, Talmud, and ancient rabbinical literature.  In his youth he authored a commentary on Shir hashirim (Song of Songs), and in 1870 he brought out his religious text Hametsaref (The crucible), clarifications of old Jewish homiletics.  He also published articles in the Hebrew press of that era.  His book Lo dubim velo yaar (Nothing of the kind) (Berdichev, 1890) dealt with interpretations of Talmudic homiletics.  He was also the author of Baḥada maḥta (At one and the same time) (Cracow, 1888); in New York he was a contributor to The Jewish Encyclopedia.  He also published in: Haivri (The Jew), Ner hamaaravi (The western light), and others serials.  He also wrote a great deal in Yiddish and published in the contemporaneous Yiddish press, such as Minikes yontef bleter (Minikes’s holiday papers).  After his death, his work Der yudisher far-peysekh (The Jewish pre-Passover) (New York, 1901) was published, probably by his son George; it was a translation from Jewish literature.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1; Minikes yontef bleter (New York) (August 15, 1898); Toyzent yor pinsk (1,000 years of Pinsk) (New York, 1941), pp. 308-9; Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 5.