LEYB VILSKER

LEYB VILSKER (1919-1988)

            He was philologist and bibliographer, born in the town of Shumsk, Ternopol district, Ukraine.  He served in the Red Army from 1940 until the end of WWII.  He graduated from Leningrad University in 1950 in Semitic languages and Hebrew studies.  For several years thereafter he ran the Semitics department of the Saltikov-Shchedrin Leningrad Open Library.  In 1970 he successfully defended his dissertation and became an academician in philological sciences; he published it in 1974 in book form. He published a number of articles in Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland), some of which were republished abroad, in particular those works concerning Yehuda Halevi.  He was also the author of: Samarityanskii yazik (The Samaritan language) (Moscow: Nauka, 1974), 94 pp.; Antdekte oytsres (Treasures discovered), notices of literary research, vol. 1 (Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1981), 59 pp., vol. 2 (1985), 63 pp.

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 246.  Additional information from: Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), p. 133.