DOVID YAKOBZON

DOVID YAKOBZON (b. March 8, 1908)

            He was born in Belzhits (Bełżyce), Lublin district, Poland, into a rabbinical family.  He studied with his father, the last Belzhits rebbe, in his grandfather’s synagogue study hall, and in the Lublin yeshiva.  At age seventeen he received ordination into the rabbinate, but he was terribly taken with secular education and became a laborer.  He began writing Hebrew poetry in 1923, later switching to Yiddish.  He debuted in print with a story—“Der letster yid in dorf” (The last Jew in the village)—in Lubliner togblat (Lublin daily newspaper), edited by Sh. Y. Stupnutski, in 1926, and later published poems, sketches, stories, novellas, and impressions from Jewish life in villages and towns in: Khelemer shtime (Voice of Chełm), Nayer folksblat (New people’s newspaper) in Lodz, Shedletser lebn (Siedlce life), and Di tsayt (The times) in Częstochowa.  In 1931 he published in Lubliner togblat (serially) a novel entitled Moskve un yerusholaim (Moscow and Jerusalem), and later he published in the same paper chapters of a longer prose work, Di letste in shtetl (The last one in town).  During WWII he disappeared without a trace.

Source: Zalmen reyzen-arkhiv (Zalmen Reyzen archive) (New York, YIVO).

Khayim Leyb Fuks