ESTER YESELSON

ESTER YESELSON (1891-December 13, 1948)

            She was born in Moscow, Russia.  In 1907 she graduated from a women’s high school, and in 1914 she received her doctoral degree in psychology and pedagogy from Moscow University.  From her student days, she was much taken with Jewish school curricula.  In 1922 she went to Berlin where she was active in OZE (Obschestvo zdravookhraneniia evreev—Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population) and the Union of Russian Jews, and she directed Jewish educational institutions.  In 1925 she made a research trip through the kibbutzim in Israel.  With Hitler’s coming to power, she settled in London.  She worked as a teacher in the local Workmen’s Circle school.  She contributed to Dr. Y. N. Shteynberg in the Frayland League.  In 1945 she moved to the United States.  She was secretary of the women’s committee connected to the Frayland League.  She published a cycle of travel descriptions of Israel in Di velt (The world) in Berlin (1925), and later published articles in: Tsukunft (Future) in New York; Fraye shriftn (Free writings) and Dos fraye vort (The free word) in London; and Afn shvel (At the threshold) in New York; among others.  She translated into Yiddish Hendrik de Man’s work, Di psikhologye fun sotsyalizm (The psychology of socialism [original: Zur Psychologie des Sozialismus]), with a foreword by Dr. Y. N. Shteynberg, 2 volumes (Warsaw, 1935), 325 pp.  She also wrote under the name A. Yoselson.  She dies in New York.

Sources: Dr. H. Frank, in Tsukunft (New York) (November 1935); Sh. G. and H. Abramovitsh, in Afn shvel (New York) (March-April 1949); Y. y. shteynberg-arkhiv (The Y. Y. Shteynberg archive) at YIVO (New York).

Khayim Leyb Fuks