YANKEV-SHMUEL TRAKHTMAN (JACOB SAMUEL TRACHTMAN)

YANKEV-SHMUEL TRAKHTMAN (JACOB SAMUEL TRACHTMAN) (June 20, 1831-March 12, 1925)

            He was born in Ovrutsh (Owrucz), Volhynia, into a rabbinical family.  He also studied secular subjects.  Over the years 1850-1863, he worked as a steward and bookkeeper to a Jewish landowner, before leaving for Odessa where until 1880 he worked as a bookkeeper for A. Brodskin in a factory.  At the same time, he continued to study on his own and to learn foreign languages.  From 1880 he lived in Akerman, Bessarabia, where he was a religious orator for the society “Bet Elohim” (House of God) and sermonized about settling the land of Israel.  He later joined in affiliation with the administration of Jewish colonization in Argentina and about this wrote articles in Hamelits (The advocate) (issues 48, 49, 50, 51 of 1870), Hatsfira (The siren), and Hamagid (The preacher) to which he had been contributing pieces since 1860, as well as in Russian-language Jewish periodicals.  He also published stories and folktales in Ḥavatselet (Daffodil) in Jerusalem, Hashiloaḥ (The shiloah) in Odessa, and Haboker or (Good morning), among others.  His books would include: Aguda aḥat (One homiletical tale) (Odessa, 1870), 64 pp.; Or tora (Light of the Torah) (Warsaw, 1881), 41 pp.; Nishmat adam (Soul of man) (Odessa, 1881), 62 pp.; Shaare tora (The gates of Torah) (Yafo, 1884), 46 pp.; and Sukat david hanofelet (The fallen house of David), a historical story (Warsaw, 1884), 80 pp., published earlier in installments in Haboker or; Kitve tam (Writings of Tam), two folkish stories (Akerman, 1885), 31 pp.  In the calendar Erets hatsvi (Land of the deer), he published treatises on language (“Haktav vehmikhtav” [Writing and the letter] and Or veḥoshekh [Light and darkness], among others) which also appeared in an offprint edition in German: (Kissingen, 1881), 48 pp.  He also authored the plays: Dos tsveyte vayb oder der trayer knekht (The second wife or the faithful slave), Kidesh levone (Blessing the new moon), Dine (Dinah), and others which remain in manuscript.  He published as well under such pen names as: Ani Shiyat, Tam, Aluf Teman, Yaakov Ish Tam, A. Sh. Maḥashavot, and Yaakov Lo Met.  He died in Akerman, Bessarabia.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1; Z. Zilbertsvayg, Leksikon fun yidishn teater (Handbook of the Yiddish theater), vol. 2 (New York, 1934), p. 891; E. R. Malachi, in Hadoar (New York) (November 17, 1944); Yaakov Tsuzmer, Beikve hador (In the footprints of a generation) (New York, 1957).

Khayim Leyb Fuks