YISROEL MARGULYES

YISROEL MARGULYES (b. 1850)

            He was born in Galats (Galați), Romania.  He studied in religious elementary school and synagogue study hall, later becoming a printer.  He was cofounder of “Dorshe tsiyon” (Preachers of Zion) and “Ḥoveve-tsiyon” (Lovers of Zion) in Romania.  In 1896 he was one of the speakers at the second conference of Romanian Zionists in Braila.  He lived in Galați, Botoșani, Braila, and Bucharest.  He served as editor of Di vahrahayt (The truth), “published once each week” (Galați, 1883), nineteen issues appeared; and (Bucharest, 1884-1885), seventy issues appeared.  The newspaper carried the motto: “Words of truth will endure forever”; and it carried on a fight against assimilation.  The editorials, signed “Hamol,” were always accompanied by a heading taken from a passage in Tanakh or a tractate by the sages, but written in a popular Yiddish.  Margulyes adapted longer stories from Jewish history which were published in the newspaper in installments.  He also wrote about Yiddish theater (using the pen name Y. Goldenthal) and ran a humorous section under the pseudonym “the two-storied clown,” as well as surveys of religious works and books under the pen name “Ben-Mortkhe.”

Sources: Shas-Roman, in Filologishe shriftn (Vilna) 3 (1933), p. 529; Dr. Israel Klausner, Ḥibat tsiyon beromaniya (Love of Zion in Romania) (Jerusalem, 1958), see index.

Khayim Leyb Fuks