YOYSEF MORGENSHTERN

YOYSEF MORGENSHTERN (b. March 10, 1889)

            He was born Kapulye (Kopyl), Minsk district, Byelorussia.  In his youth he belonged to Pirḥe Tsiyon (Flowers of Zion).  In 1902 he moved to Warsaw to study a trade, but for taking part in a labor demonstration, he was arrested, thrown in jail for a month, and sent back to Kopyl with a convict procession.  In 1903 he arrived in New York and worked as a tailor.  In 1905 he settled in Cleveland, where he was a peddler, a cigar maker, and later became a manufacturer of electrical instruments.  He was active in the community with the Labor Zionists, in the socialist territorialist party, and later in the pro-Soviet IKOR (Yidishe kolonizatsye organizatsye in rusland [Jewish colonization organization in Russia]) and Ambidzhan (All-American Society for Aid to Birobidzhan).  He wrote articles on Jewish immigration issues for Idishe velt (Jewish world) in Cleveland and published chapters of his memoirs in Yidishe kultur (Jewish culture) in New York.  In book form he published: Ikh gedenk di teg (I remember the days), foreword by N. Mayzil (New York, 1962), 262 pp.  In 1959 he established in Tel Aviv the “Vaynper-Morgenshtern Fund” for translating works from Yiddish into Hebrew.  He was last living in Hollywood, Florida.

Benyomen Elis