RUVN
LERNER (1902-1972)
A Soviet Jewish linguist, he came
from the town of Yanov (Janów), Ukraine.
From 1933 he was a researcher at the Office for Teaching Yiddish
Language, Literature, and Folklore in the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev;
he specialized in historical issues. He
published in the compendia Afn
shprakhfront (On the language front): “Der genezis funem genitiv-posesiv”
(The origin of the genitive possessive) 1 (Kiev, 1937), pp. 126-49; “Tsu der
geshikhte fun der literarisher shprakh obheyb 19tn yorhundert” (On the history
of the literary language, beginning of the nineteenth century) 3 (Kiev, 1937),
pp. 165-90; “Intonatsyonal-stilistishe bazunderkeytn fun sholem-aleykhems
shprakh” (Inflection-stylistic peculiarities of Sholem-Aleykhem’s language) 4
(Kiev, 1937), pp. 101-26. Together with
Kh. Loytsker, M. Maydanski, and M. Shapiro, he completed the work on the great
Russian-Yiddish dictionary (edited by Elye Spivak, ultimately published in 1984);
and he worked with Ayzik Zaretski on a dictionary of Yiddish orthography. With the musicologist Moyshe Beregovski, he
adapted and prepared for publication the first collection of “Folklor fun der
foterlendisher milkhome” (Folklore from the war of the fatherland [WWII]),
special ghetto and concentration camp songs and battle songs. In 1947 the Office of Yiddish Culture at the
USSR’s Academy of Sciences sent him to the cities and towns in the Vinitse (Vinnytsa) region to collect new folkloric
materials. At that time he assembled
seventy folktales and eighty-six folksongs.
He bore the title: “Candidate in Philological Science.” He was repressed in 1949, released in the
mid-1950s, but he did not return to work any further in his field of Yiddish
linguistics.
Sources:
Y. Mark, in Yivo-bleter (New York)
16.1 (1940), p. 31, and 16.2 (1940), pp. 154-57; “Yidisher folklor” (Yiddish
folklore), Eynikeyt (Moscow) (October
2, 1945); “A groyser oyftu in antviklen di yidishe kultur un visnshaft” (A
great feat in developing Jewish culture and scholarship), Eynikeyt (April 2, 1946); “Naye folkslider” (New folksongs), Eynikeyt (October 23, 1947); P. Novik, Eyrope tsvishn milkhome un sholem
(Europe between war and peace) (New York, 1948), pp. 269-70.
Zaynvl Diament
[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), p. 221.]
No comments:
Post a Comment