SHOYEL SOKAL

SHOYEL SOKAL (December 3, 1888-September 6, 1964)

            He was born in Czernowitz, Bukovina.  He studied in religious elementary school, high school, and university.  He graduated as a lawyer.  Over the years 1914-1918, he served in the Austrian army.  He lived in Vienna (1919-1938); he moved to London in 1938 and to the United States in 1939.  He took part in the Czernowitz language conference (August 1908).  He was one of the leaders in the struggle for state recognition of Yiddish in the popular press in 1910 in Bukovina and Galicia (at that time, in Austria).  In his early youth he was already a Labor Zionist, later a member of the central committee of the party.  Together with B. Loker and Z. Rubashov (Zalman Shazar), he ran the Labor Zionist office in Vienna.  In 1936 he participated in the founding conference of the World Jewish Congress in the United States.  In 1907 he began publishing in the Labor Zionist organ, Der yudisher arbayter (The Jewish worker) in Lemberg.  From 1909, he was publishing work in Geverkshaft problemen (Union issues) and in the German Jewish Wochenblatt (Weekly newspaper) of Dr. Nosn Birnboym (Nathan Birnbaum) and Die Freistatt (The free state) in Vienna.  He later revived Der yudisher arbayter in Vienna.  In America he placed work in Der idisher kemfer (The Jewish fighter) in New York.  He also contributed to a volume by Nekhemye Robinzon (Nehemiah Robinson), Dictionary of Jewish Public Affairs and Related Matters (New York: World Jewish Congress, 1958).  He died in New York.

Sources: Shloyme Bikl and B. Loker, in Idisher kemfer (New York) (December 19, 1958); Bikl, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (New York) (October 3, 1964); M. Noy, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (January 23, 1959); Idisher kemfer (January 31, 1964); P. Shteynvaks, in Keneder odler (Montreal) (October 1, 1964); Shteynvaks, in Idisher kemfer (October 9, 1964); V. B., in Idisher kemfer (October 23, 1964).

Leyb Vaserman