MENAKHEM-NOKHUM LANGERMAN

MENAKHEM-NOKHUM LANGERMAN (b. 1866)

            He was born in Turka, near Stryj (Stryi), eastern Galicia, where his grandfather and father were rabbis.  He studied in the Belz circle and there received ordination into the rabbinate.  In 1887, after his father’s death, he succeeded him.  He went on to become a Hassidic rebbe and the author of religious texts.  During the war, 1914-1918, when the Russian overran Galicia, he was arrested and tortured.  He later escaped to Vienna where he lived until 1926.  He wrote a chronicle-like poem entitled Di milkhome (The war) (Vienna, 1920), 102 pp., in which he described in verse “the fleeing before the Russians from the city of Turka, by Stryj, in the year 1914, as well as their arrests, and arrests of other rabbis and candidates for the rabbinate in the year 1914, and their release.”  There are also several religious poems in his book.  From information learned from his countrymen in New York, Langerman returned to Poland in 1926 and died there.

Khayim Leyb Fuks