YEHUDE DARDAK

YEHUDE DARDAK (b. 1898)

            He was born in Ilye (Ilya), near Vileyka, Vilna region, where his father, R. Dardak, was rabbi.  Over the year 1911-1914, he studied in the Mirer Yeshiva.  He spent two years in Minsk during WWI.  He worked as a teacher and organized Hebrew public schools in a series of smaller and larger towns.  When the Polish military invaded Ilye, he was arrested and dragged off to Lemberg.  Four months later he was released.  He had no wish to remain under Polish rule, so in 1921 moved to Soviet Minsk.  There he joined the Red Army.  He subsequently graduated from university and helped build Soviet Yiddish schools.  He was the first author of a systematic course for pedagogues in Yiddish.  Among his books and more important essays: “Di tsveyte konferents fun di tuers fun di yidishe kinder-heyzer in minsk” (The second conference of leaders of the Yiddish houses in Minsk), Af di vegn tsu der nayer shul (En route to the new school) 2 (Minsk, 1924), pp. 78-80; Gezelshaftkentenish, arbet bukh farn V lernyor, ershter teyl (Social knowledge, a workbook for the fifth school year, part 1), together with Y. Rubin, L. Holmshtok, H. Aleksandrov, and others (Minsk, 1928), 108 pp.; Pedagogik far studentn fun pedagogishe tekhnikums un lerers fun 1tn ḳontsenter (Pedagogy, for students in pedagogical technicums and teachers in the first school year) (Minsk, 1931), 407 pp.

Sources: Y. Rodak, in Di yidishe shprakh (Kiev) (July-October 1928), pp. 43-53; A. Golomb, in Yivo-bleter (Vilna) 3 (1932), pp. 260-64.