A.
L. LIFSHITS
The younger brother of Shiye-Mortkhe
Lifshits, he completed rabbinical training in Zhitomir and took up
teaching. He was close to the Socialist-Revolutionary
circles. Arrested several times, he led
a struggle against the anti-democratic conduct of the “philistine rule” (a form
of self-management in Tsarist Russia) in Berdichev, and in general he displayed
a temperament of a community leader, though he did not have the appropriate
surroundings or favorable circumstances.
Probably under the influence and perhaps also with the assistance of his
older brother, he published Di risishe
gramatike oyf yudesh (Russian grammar in Yiddish) (Zhitomir: Y. M. Baksht,
1875), 58 pp., written in a pure language, with an interesting, occasionally
quite successful, terminology and a well thought out orthography, according to
his brother’s system. He also left in
manuscript a dictionary entitled Erklerung
af yudesh fun di fremde verter vos vern banitst in der russishe shprakhe aroysgigeben
nokh mikhelzohn (Explanation in Yiddish of the foreign words used in the Russian
language published by Mikhelzohn), located in the Strashun Library in Vilna,
mentioned by Zalmen Reyzen. In his late
years, he was thought to have supported assimilation. He died before WWI in Kiev.
Source:
Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2
(under the biography of Y. M. Lifshits).
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