KHAYIM-GERSHON LEYBOVITSH

KHAYIM-GERSHON LEYBOVITSH (b. 1886)

            He was born in Vilna.  Over the years 1907-1910, he worked with the Strashun Library in Vilna.  At that time he began to write (mainly on bibliography and Jewish library systems) for Der fraynd (The friend) in St. Petersburg-Warsaw.  He spent 1910-1913 studying in Belgium and France.  He wrote for Di tsayt (The times) in St. Petersburg (1912), and later he returned to Vilna, worked in the library of “Mefitse haskala” ([Society for the] promotion of enlightenment), assisted in collecting materials for A. Kirzhnits’s Yorbukh far yidishe biblyotekn (Yearbook for Jewish libraries) (Vilna, 1914).  He served as editor of the trimonthly Der yudisher biblyoteker (The Jewish librarian) (Vilna, 1914), in which he published bibliographical criticism calling attention to new books.  From 1918 he was the representative of “OPE” (Society for the promotion of enlightenment [among the Jews of Russia]), “Kultur-lige” (Culture league), and M. Winchevsky’s library in Kiev.  From 1929 he worked with the Institute for Jewish Proletarian Culture at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and technical-stylistic overseer of published Yiddish materials in Ukraine, especially textbooks for Jewish schools.  He was the author of a number of works on the development of Jewish library systems in the Soviet Union (published in scholarly works in Ukraine).

Sources: YIVO archives (New York); A. Kirzhnits, foreword to Yorbukh far yidishe biblyotekn (Yearbook for Jewish libraries) (Vilna, 1914); Kirzhnits, Di yidishe prese in der gevezener rusisher imperye, 1823-1916 (The Yiddish press in the former Russian empire, 1823-1916) (Moscow, 1930), see index; information from Dr. M. Weinreich in New York.

Khayim Leyb Fuks