KHAYIM-YITSKHOK DAYMONDSHTEYN

KHAYIM-YITSKHOK DAYMONDSHTEYN (b. May 6, 1874)

            He was born in Mezhibizh, Podolia region, Ukraine, into a family that drew its pedigree back to R. Nakhmen Braslaver.  He received a Jewish and a partial secular education.  He later became a publisher and settled in Odessa.  Due to his acquaintance with M. Spektor, he was included in a circle of Yiddish writers in Odessa: Mendele, Linetski, Zamoshtshin, and Lerner, as well as the younger Bukhbinder, Bekerman, and others.  In 1890 he joined the revolutionary movement and thus had no choice but to escape from Russia.  In 1892 he came to New York and was active in the Jewish labor movement.  For several years he was a traveling agent for Forverts (Forward) and Tsukunft (Future).  He was a cofounder in 1904 of the literary group, “Di yidishe yugend” (The Jewish youth), in New York.  During the years of WWI, he was active in aid work for Jewish war victims in Europe.  He published reportage pieces on the lives of Jewish laborers, travel narratives, stories, and tales in Forverts (until 1906), Di naye post (The new mail), and Yugend (Youth), and in other publications of the young writers who gathered around “Di yidishe yugend.”  Over the years 1926-1927, he published in Amerikaner (American) in New York a series of folktales.

Source: “Zalmen Reyzen Archives,” in YIVO (New York).