Friday, 24 March 2017
ARYE LEYBENZON
ZH. (SHNEUR-ZALMEN) LEYBNER
DANIEL LEYBL (LEIBEL)
SHMUEL LEYBOVITS
TSVI-HIRSH-YOYSEF LEYBOVITSH
MIKHL LEYBOVITSH
M. LEYBOVITSH
Thursday, 23 March 2017
LEYZER LEYBOVITSH
KHAYIM-GERSHON LEYBOVITSH
KHAYIM LEYBOVITSH
MIRIAM LEYB
AVROM-MORTKHE LEYB
YOYSEF LITITSHEVSKI
MENAKHEM-NOKHUM LITINSKI
VOLF LITINSKI
ARYE LITVINOVSKI
Wednesday, 22 March 2017
LEYB LITVINOV
MORTKHE LITVIN (LITVINE)
A. LITVIN
Tuesday, 21 March 2017
MOYSHE LITVAKOV
MOYSHE LITVAKOV (1879-December 1937)
He was a literary
critic, current events writer, and editor, born in Tsherkas (Cherkasy),
Ukraine, to a father who was a religious primary school teacher who had moved
there from Lithuania. He studied Talmud in religious elementary school and
synagogue study hall until age seventeen. Proficient in Talmud, commentators,
and responsa literature, at age seventeen he became a follower of the Jewish
Enlightenment, turned his attention to secular topics of learning, and sat as
an external student for the examinations to the eighth class at high school. Over
the years 1902-1905, he lived in Paris, studying philosophy, history, and
literature at the Sorbonne. His political and social activities began in the
latter half of the 1890s as a follower of Aḥad-Haam’s
national and Zionist ideas, but soon he became one of the first leaders of “proletarian
Zionism” (Labor Zionism or workers’ Zionism), and together with Yankev
Leshtshinski, Shimen Dobin, and other participants in the Rovno Conference
(spring 1903), he belonged to the group of Zionist socialists who organized the
“Vozrozhdenye” (Rebirth) conference. In the
winter of 1904 at a conference in Odessa, when Vozrozhdenye crystalized into the
Zionist-Socialist Party, Litvakov (then still in Paris) was selected onto the
central committee of the new party. In 1905, after the first Russian
Revolution, he returned to Russia, became one of the ideologues and one of the
most important leaders of the Zionist-Socialist Party, and (using the pseudonym
Nitsuts) contributed to all of the publications of the party. Under the pen
name Simenzon, he published for the first time in 1903 two short articles for
the Russian-language Vozrozhdenye
(nos. 3-4) concerning political matters. In 1906 he edited in Vilna the party’s
organs in Yiddish: Der nayer veg (The
new way), Unzer veg (Our way), and Dos vort (The word). At that time, he
also published a pamphlet: Der tsienizmus
un di ugande-frage (Zionism and the Uganda question) (Warsaw: Medina,
1907/1908), 34 pp. At that time he was writing articles [in Hebrew] for Hazman (The times). In 1908 he became a
regular contributor to the highly influential Russian daily newspaper Kievskaia mysl' (Kievan thought), in
which he primarily wrote (under the pen name M. Lirov) on Russian and Western
European literary topics, as well as on Jewish social issues. He also placed
work in the anthology Fun tsayt tsu tsayt
(From time to time) (Kiev: Kunst farlag, 1911-1912) and elsewhere.
During WWI he devoted his attention to aid work
for Jewish refugees from the front zones, and he contributed to an inter-party
aid meeting in St. Petersburg (in 1916), where together with representatives of
the Bund, he administered the principle of “aid through work” for the homeless.
After the February Revolution in 1917, he played an important role in founding
the “Fareynikte” (United socialist party), and he was a
co-editor of the daily organ of the party, Di
naye tsayt (The new times), in which, aside from topical political
articles, he also published significant treatments of problems in Jewish
community life, Jewish national autonomy, and the like. He was a cofounder of
the Kultur-lige (Culture league) in 1918; one of three directors of the
“Litkom” (All-Ukrainian literary committee); and head of the Yiddish section of
Litkom. He edited the collection Baginen
(Dawn), which the Jewish section published in Kiev in 1919, and he contributed
to the collection Eygns (One’s own),
to the journal Bikher-velt (Book
world), and to virtually all Yiddish publications in Kiev in this violent
period.
One of the most active members in
the central Ukrainian “Rada” (provisional parliament), Litvakov was
ideologically approaching Bolshevism ever more. After a series of efforts to
create from the Fareynikte and the Bund one joint party, when the Red Army
invaded Ukraine in early 1919, Litvakov brought about a split in the Fareynikte
and, as leader of the splinter left wing, joined the Communist Bund—or
“Kombund”—which embraced the name of “Komfarband” (Communist Union). In May of
that year, the Komfarband became an integral part of the Ukrainian Communist
Party, and from that point on, over the course of more than a decade and one
half, Litvakov played an exceptionally important role in Jewish life in the
Soviet Union—as an authoritative force in the Jewish section of the All-Russian
Communist Party: the Yevsektsye (Jewish section). Around 1921 he moved to
Moscow where in 1924 he became editor of Der
emes (The truth), the Yiddish-language organ of the Communist central
committee in Soviet Russia. In his daily articles for the newspaper, he
concentrated on “Octoberizing” Yiddish literature in Russia, while he served as
steward of anti-religious campaigns in the country, contributing to the
Russian-language Bezbozhnik (Atheist)
and assaulting with the profound sharpness of his biting satire the “hardened
ideology of the Jewish people” also outside Russia. An ideologue of
“traditional Jewish revolutionism” even before he became a Bolshevik, in his
post-October period he strove to establish Yiddish literature in the service of
“Jewish revolution,” and he became the spokesman for the so-called “proletarian
critic” in Yiddish literature. He devoted much attention as well to Yiddish
theater, and his name was closely linked to the development and revival of the
Moscow State Chamber Theater (with Aleksey Granovski as the director).
The great majority of his
journalistic articles and literary critical writings remain scattered through
Soviet Yiddish newspapers and journals, with only a portion of them collected
in book form: In umru (In anxiety),
vol. 1 (Kiev: Shul un bukh, 1918), 120 pp., a selection of Litvakov’s articles
from the years 1906-1918 which include, among others, “Yidishlekher
revolutsyonizm” (Traditional Jewish revolutionism), “A bisl
sotsyal-psikhologye” (A little social psychology), articles on Mendele
Moykher-Sforim, Sholem-Aleykhem, Perets, Sholem Asch, A. Vayter, Bergelson, and
others, with Litvakov’s important preface; Finf
yor melukhisher idisher kamer-teater, 1919-1924 (Five years of the Yiddish
State Chamber Theater, 1919-1924) (Moscow: Shul un bukh, 1924), 144 pp.; In umru, second volume (Moscow: Shul un
bukh, 1926), 219 pp.; Af tsvey frontn,
zamlung artiklen (On two fronts, collection of articles) (Moscow: Central
People’s Publishers, USSR, 1931), 175 pp. Litvakov was a member of the
Institute for Jewish Culture at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, later
professor of Yiddish literature and Jewish history in the Jewish division of
the pedagogical institute in Moscow. Over the years 1924-1928, he was also
director of the “Shul and bukh” (School and book) publishing house in Moscow. He
was editor of Emes-zhurnal (Truth
magazine), an illustrated biweekly journal which appeared between January and
May 1928 in Moscow. He frequently pointed out problems with Soviet Yiddish
literature and led highly polemical battles with foreign Yiddish writers.
He was a tragic figure in the
history of Yiddish literature and culture generally. Necessarily, because he
never so much as doubted the justice of his sentence, he could not avoid outrageous
conflicts. However ingenious, it was not his brilliant mind, and however severe
it was not his judgments as a writer—his written work and stories—he could nevertheless
not foresee how Yiddish literature would develop in the Soviet Union and what sacrifices
it bring to the altar of history and among them—including himself, Moyshe
Litvakov. The last time that his
name was mentioned as editor of Der emes was the issue published on October
15, 1927. From 1931 a systematic struggle against
Litvakov suddenly erupted in the Soviet Yiddish press. They charged that he was
undermining organized proletarian Yiddish literature, that he defended
nationalist-Menshevik conceptions of the “cultural heritage,” and that he was
guilty of intuition, among other things. He defended himself with all the vigor
of his fighting character. He thrashed right and left, not to allow the
literary slander against him and then to repent, to admit errors he committed,
regret them, and deny his earlier positions. This saved him in 1932. He was
returned to his editorial post at Der emes,
from which he had been removed for a time. But the attacks on him continued
coming. In the 1930s, during the wild Stalinist terror, his enemies in Soviet
Yiddish literature incriminated him for Trotskyist tendencies in his writings. He
was arrested with the sadly well-known “nighttime visits” in the summer of
1937, and, according to an officially published report, this “enemy of the
people” would have died in prison shortly after his arrest.
Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon,
vol. 2; Zalmen Zilbertsvayg, Leksikon fun yidishn
teater
(Handbook of the Yiddish theater), vol. 2 (New York, 1934); Shmuel Niger, Lezer, dikhter, kritiker (Reader, poet,
critic) (New York, 1928), vol. 1, pp. 129-47, vol. 2, pp. 479-92; Niger, Kritik un kritiker (Criticism and
critic) (Buenos Aires, 1959), pp. 59-67, 221-27; M. Shalit, Lukhes in undzer literatur (Calendars in
our literature) (Vilna, 1929), pp. 40-41; A. Gurshteyn, in Visnshaftlekhe yorbikher (Scholarly annuals) (Moscow, 1929), vol.
1; Yankev Leshtshinski, Tsvishn
lebn un toyt (Between life and death), vol. 1 (Vilna, 1930); M. Kiper, in Di royte velt (Kharkov) (June 1930;
September-October 1931); Y. Bronshteyn, in Atake
(Attack) (Moscow, 1931), pp. 298-300, 319-31; Bronshteyn, Problemen fun leninishn etap in der literatur-kentenish (Problems of the Leninist stage in literary knowledge) (Minsk,
1932), pp. 28, 91ff; Kh. Dunets, Di iberdikhtung-teorye fun kh. litvakov (The
poetic theory of Comrade Litvakov) (Minsk, 1932); Dunets, in Di royte velt (March 1932; May 1932); A.
Abtshuk, Etyudn un materialn tsu der geshikhte fun der yidisher literatur
bavegung in FSRR (Studies and material for the history of the Yiddish
literature movement in the Soviet Union) (Kharkov, 1934), pp. 48-49; Kh. Sh.
Kazdan, in Vokhnshrift far literatur
(Warsaw) (March 4, 1932); Kazdan, in Foroys
(Warsaw) (November 11, 1938); Kazdan, Fun kheyder un shkoles biz tsisho (From religious and secular primary
schools to Tsisho) (Mexico City, 1956), see index; A. Litvak, in Tsukunft (new York) (May 1932); Dr. A.
Mukdoni, in Morgn-zhurnal (New York)
(June 2, 1933; February 20, 1935); Mukdoni, in the anthology Lite (Lithuania), vol. 1 (New York,
1951), pp. 1073-74; B. Glazman, in Idisher
kemfer (New York) (October 4, 1940); D. Tsharni (Daniel Charney), A yortsendlik aza, 1914-1924, memuarn
(Such a decade, 1914-1924, memoirs) (New York, 1943), pp. 295-97, 311-12,
314-20; Charney, Vilne (Vilna)
(Buenos Aires, 1951), pp. 149-52; Al. Pomerants, in Dovid edelshtat gedenk-bukh (Dovid Edelshtot memory book) (New
York, 1953), see index; Pomerants, Di
sovetishe haruge malkhes (The [Jewish writers] murdered by the Soviet
government) (Buenos Aires, 1961), p. 481; Ben-tsien Kats, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (New York) (August 7,
1955); Zalmen Shneur, Ḥ. n. bialik uvene
doro
(Ḥ. N. Bialik and his contemporaries) (Tel Aviv, 1958), pp. 340-48; Shloyme
Bikl, Shrayber fun mayn dor (Writers
of my generation) (New York, 1958), pp. 287-304; N. Mayzil, Dos yidishe shafn un der
yidisher arbeter in sovetn-farband (Jewish creation
and the Jewish worker in the Soviet Union) (New York, 1959), see index; Y.
Kohn, Baym rand fun onhoyb (At the
edge of the beginning) (New York, 1960), pp. 218ff; Y. Lifshits and M. Altshuler, comps., Briv fun yidishe sovetishe shraybers (Letters of Soviet Jewish
writers) (Jerusalem, 1979/1980), pp. 233-39.
Borekh Tshubinski
[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), pp. 206-7.]