Friday 15 April 2016

YEHUDE-LEYB VALNERMAN

YEHUDE-LEYB VALNERMAN (b. 1873)
            He was born in Bendin (Będzin), Poland, into a Hassidic family.  He studied in religious primary school, yeshiva, and with private tutors.  After marrying he became a Talmud teacher for children in wealthy homes.  In 1906 he moved to Warsaw and became a leader in youth circles of the Gerer Hassidim and later became part of Agudat Yisrael.  He was the founder and editor of the first Orthodox Hebrew and Yiddish newspapers in Poland: Hakol kol yaakov (The voice is the voice of Jacob) (Będzin-Warsaw), 1906; and Hakol (The voice) (Warsaw), 1907—in both Hebrew and Yiddish, which he filled out virtually alone with articles, feature pieces, and poetry on religious motifs.  As he was characterized by Shmuel Rotshteyn, a second co-creator of the Orthodox press in Poland, Valnerman was: “quite the Talmud scholar, brilliant and spirited, who excelled with his skillful pen.”  He was also the editor of Varshever tsaytung (Warsaw newspaper), which appeared in Warsaw in July 1907.  Until WWI he was living in Warsaw.  Later he returned to Będzin in the early 1920s.

Sources: A. Kirzhnits, Di yidishe prese in der gevezener rusisher imperye, 1823-1916 (The Yiddish press in the former Russian empire, 1823-1916) (Moscow, 1930), no. 134; Shmuel Rotshteyn, in Shaarim (Tel Aviv, 1946); Y. Y. Trunk, in Poyln (New York) 4 (1949), pp. 246-47; A. M. Levin, in Hamodia (Jerusalem) 1000 (1954); M. Prager, in Fun noentn over (New York) 2 (1956), p. 447.
Khayim Leyb Fuks


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