SHLOYME DIAMANT

SHLOYME DIAMANT (November 26, 1859-Fewbruary 11, 1923)

            He was born in Botoșani, Romania, into the family of a cantor.  He received a traditional education in religious elementary school and synagogue study hall, and later he studied secular subjects and languages.  From his youth he was active in the Ḥibat-tsiyon (Love of Zion, early Zionist) movement, first in Botoșani and later in Bârlad, and there he founded student clubs.  At the end of the nineteenth century, he emigrated to the United States and became a music teacher.  He was at the same time involved in the labor movement.  He was the author of librettos and music to a number of Moyshe Hurvits’s historical plays.  He began writing poetry on ethnic themes in his early years.  He contributed as well to Linetski’s Praktisher folks calendar (Practical people’s calendar) (Odessa, 1876) and to Natsyonal: eyn vokhnblat fir politishe, literarishe, ekonomishe und natsyonal-ongelegenhayṭen dem yudishn folk’s (National: a weekly newspaper for political, literary, economic, and national affairs of the Jewish people) (Botoșani, 1885).  In America he became a contributor to Varhayt (Truth) in New York, where he, among other works, also published translations of Moses Hess, Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Berne, and others.  He was the editor of the monthly Der idisher gayst (The Jewish spirit) in New York (1910-1914).  There he published editorials on both Jewish and general issues, reviews of theater and books, as well as translations, among them: Moses Hess, Roym un yerusholaim (Rome and Jerusalem [original: Rom und Jerusalem], with an introduction and characterization of the work (published serially over the years 1913-1914); and posthumously, A yid tsvishn poyerim, pyese (A Jew among peasants, a play) (Lodz: Yidish nbukh, 1948), 64 pp.  He also published under the pen names: S. D-t, Ben-Sore, A Ratsenzent, and others.

Source: In the Zalmen Reyzen archives at YIVO in New York.

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 195.]