DOVID (DAVID) PINSKI

DOVID (DAVID) PINSKI (April 5, 1872-August 11, 1959)

            He was born in Mohilev (Mogilev), by the Dnieper River, in Russia.  His father Mortkhe Yitskhok was a commissioner for military clothing in Moscow.  At age seven he began studying Talmud and quickly acquired a reputation as a prodigy.  At ten he sensed within himself the inclination to write.  He recounted of himself: “Already in my letters to my father in Moscow, I knew that I was ‘writing’ and that I had to ‘write.’  In those [letters] I described—sometimes in ‘zhargon’ [Yiddish] and sometimes in the ‘language of holiness’ [Hebrew-Aramaic]—a fire, a theft, an event in the Strashler study chamber, or the pogrom moods of 1882.”  Pinski carried this awareness of a creative personality within himself from his early youth.  He read voluminously in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian, and he frequently attended Russian and Yiddish theatrical performances in Mohilev.  Under the influence of these performances, at age twelve he wrote his own play, which his friends “performed” for an audience of their own making.  At thirteen he moved with his parents to Moscow.  In general he studied secular subject matter.  The ambition to become a writer grew, and his notebooks filled up with the beginnings of sketches and stories, with the outlines of novels, and with the titles of novellas.  At sixteen he began writing a story in Russian, whose content was characteristic of the independent pathway he was taking in literature and the courageousness of his ideas which came to fruition in subsequent years.  In this story Pinski described his protagonist, an ethnic Jew who converts to Christianity so he can marry the daughter of a Russian general, with whom he has fallen madly in love.  Yet he remains a Jew and a “lover of Zion.”  In 1890-1891, Pinski lived in Vitebsk.  There he met the young Ruvn Brainin, and together they organized in the city a “Bene-Tsiyon” (Children of Zion) association, of which Pinski was secretary.  He wrote Zionist poems and composed melodies for them.  He wrote in Yiddish and deviated on the language question from the “lovers of Zion.”  One year later he traveled to Vienna with the idea of studying medicine.  He stopped off in Warsaw en route, primarily because he was drawn to the person of Y. L. Perets, whose book Bakante bilder (Familiar scenes) and his works in “Di yidishe biblyotek” (The Yiddish library) he had read and whom he considered the “leader of young people.”  Pinski had with him a notebook full of stories which he had, until then, written down, and he wanted from Perets literary ordination.  Perets received him with great warmth and befriended both him and Y. Dinezon and encouraged them to pursue literature.  He stayed in Vienna only a very short time.  In early 1892 Pinski returned to Warsaw (after the expulsion of Jews from Moscow, his parents had settled there), now a convinced cosmopolitan socialist.  He supported himself by teaching.  Pinski debuted in print in 1893 with a poem entitled “Leshone-toyve” (Happy New Year) in Epelberg’s Varshever yidisher kalendar (Warsaw Jewish calendar).  A second poem “Der simkhes toyre yid” (The Simhat Torah Jew) was published together with his own music in Shloyme Daymond’s journal in New York.  In 1894 Mortkhe Spektor published in his Hoyz-fraynd (House friend) a humorous, satirical feature by Pinski entitled “Af der provints” (In the provinces), a kind of introduction to his later series “Shtet un shtetlekh” (Cities and towns); and a satirical story about a liberal community leader “Der groyser mentshenfraynt” (The great philanthropist) and also a stinging critique of the textbooks by the Hebrew religious writer and historian Zev Yavets—“Af milkhome mitn hinterfislekh tants” (At war with an ensnaring dance), written under the pen name Ploni—which made quite a stir at that time and aroused a sharp polemic.  That same year he published a story entitled “Arop der yokh” (Down with the yoke) in Epelberg’s Kalendar, and street scenes and “Kleynikeytn” (Trifles) in Perets’s Yidishe biblyotek (III).  In these works Pinski taught in new tones for Yiddish literature, the call to struggle against reaction and falsehood.  He aroused the Jewish laborer to protest and revolt.  He introduced Perets to the conspiratorial circles or Jewish workers.  Together with Perets, he opened a new era in Yiddish literature.  He considered literature a weapon in the fight for a new social order.  In those years he was, in the word of Shmuel Niger, a “socialist of folkish disposition, and just as a socialist signified a socialist enlightener and often a socialist maskil [follower of the Jewish Enlightenment], Pinsk was also a socialist maskil.”  With Perets he ran a revolutionary student circle which took as its objective to enlighten and revolutionize Jewish workers through suitable literature and popular scientific writings, pamphlets, and newspapers.  They established the publisher “Y. L. Perets Publications.”  Pinski wrote up for it a programmatic introduction in the form of a story entitled “R’ Shloyme” (Reb Shloyme).  Pinski expressed in it the importance of education and science for both the individual’s and the masses’ progress.  The same publisher also brought out Pinski’s reworking of A. E. Brehm’s Di affen (Apes [original: Die Affen), using the pen name D. Puls (Warsaw, 1894), 52 pp.  At the same time, the publishing house of Yitskhok Goyde, later known as B. Gorin, brought out Pinski’s “Der groyser mentshenfraynt,” a realistic depiction of a bourgeois who oppresses his workers in their workshops and offices that he operates, but in the public view he is seen as a philanthropist with a magnanimous nature; also, in “Arop der yokh” in which he expresses the pride of a porter who challenges the town’s rich man.  When the student circle fell apart, Perets, Pinski, and Spektor, with financial assistance from Spektor’s sister-in-law Hodl Koyfman (Pinski’s wife from 1897), began to publish a collection entitled Literatur un lebn (Literature and life) and later Yontef bletlikh (Holidays sheets).  Pinsk was at the time one of the principal contributors.  His “Khayim der meshores” (Khayim the servant) was published together with Perets’s “Der shtrayml” (The fir-trimmed hat) and “Bontshe shvayg” (Bontshe the silent), and it made a huge impression on the Jewish street.  The Yontef bletlikh helped to spread socialist ideas among the Jewish masses.  Pinski’s name acquired extraordinary popularity.  When he traveled through the provinces, he came face to face with his followers, for whom he read aloud from his own writings at gatherings run by Perets, and he organized the so-called “zhargonishe komitetn” (Yiddish committees) which were charged with, among other tasks, establishing funds to publish Warsaw publications.  Because of continual deficits and the reprisals by state organs, the Yontef bletlikh had to cease publication.  Spektor had earlier to withdraw from them because of their radical tone.  This controversy drove Pinski to discontinue his work with Spektor’s Hoyz-fraynd.

            In the spring of 1896, Pinski settled in Berlin to study at the university.  In those years he wrote for the New York-based Yiddish socialist daily Abend blat (Evening newspaper), in which he published stories under the pen name D. Puls and articles using the names Doyfek and Studyonus.  He succeeded in founding a publisher “Tsaytgayst” (Spirit of the times), and he published in it his story “A farfalener” (A doomed one).  (The publisher also brought out the pamphlet Darvinizm [Darwinism] by Elye Davidzon.)  In 1897 the student association “Bildung” (Education) in Berlin published Pinski’s popularization of physiology, Di lere fun leben (The teachings of life), under the name D. Mardfin.  In Berlin he became acquainted with representatives of German literature.  Studying over the years 1890-1896 at Berlin University, he examined the spirit of German literature.  He was influenced already in his youth by Berthold Auerbach.  Now he was impressed by the work of dramatists Friedrich Hebel, Heinrich von Kleist, and Otto Ludwig among the older writers and Gerhart Hauptmann among the modern ones.  The one who influenced him more than others, however, was Henrik Ibsen.  In his volume, Di yidishe drama (Yiddish drama) (New York, 1909), he wrote that Ibsen’s Bygmester Solness (The master builder) showed the way to every playwright to build castles and palaces as well as houses for civilian dwellings.  For a certain period of time, Pinski lived in Switzerland.  Together with Dr. Chaim Zhitlovsky, he assembled the famed meeting of the friends of Yiddish in Basel on the morning following the Zionist congress there.  At that time, Pinski penned his first social-psychological drama in Yiddish, Ayzik sheftl (Isaac Sheftel).  In this play he depicts the loneliness and isolation of the creative person even under conditions of rising revolutionary life.  The work was highly praised by Gerhart Hauptmann and Ludwig Fulda, mainly by the Freie Bühne (Free stage) (even though he refused to produce it on a German stage because of the Jewish theme).  At the request of student circles, Pinski composed a one-act play entitled Yesurim (Suffering) in 1899, an expression of the struggle between parents and children against the canvas of the Jewish revolutionary movement.  In December 1899, at the invitation of Herman Simpson, editor of Abend blat, Yiddish organ of the Socialist Workers’ Party, Pinski came to New York and soon began to develop an intensive range of literary and community activities.  He undertook the literary editorship of Abend blat and became co-editor of the weekly publication Di arbeter tsaytung (The workers’ newspaper) under editor-in-chief Yoysef Shlosberg.  Both papers, however, had to close down because of internal conflicts which were then going on in the socialist movement in the country.  Two years later the weekly organ was revived under the name Der arbeter (The worker) and the editorship of Yoysef Shlosberg.  Pinski would remain connected to this publication until it ceased appearing in 1911.  All three newspapers played an important role in the development of the Jewish labor movement and in no small measure aided in the formation of Yiddish literature in America.  He published many young writers here, as well as his own shorter and longer stories.  He also wrote here critical articles and essays on theater.  In this period he identified with the Bund and took over a regular section of Der arbeter entitled “In dem bunds rayon” (In the field of the Bund), which served as an important source for the American Jewish worker on the revolutionary activities of the Bund in Tsarist Russia.

            Pinski was a pioneer of Yiddish social literature.  He laid emphasis not on the sufferings of the worker, but brought forth the revolt of workers against those sufferings.  This was, though, not the revolt of a group but of an individual (in the Russia the Jewish worker still had not demonstrated how properly to organize into a conscious collective).  This was also the element separated Pinski from the poets and storytellers whom he met in the United States.  They were already speaking of a labor force and writing for a proletariat.  He was in the meantime satisfied with individual proletarians who were looking to preserve the value of their own humanity.  Pinsk was similar to many American Yiddish writers in his attachment to the feelings of love.  He depicted passionate love scenes even before he came to America.  The women whom he would depict were free, natural, active, and energetic, much less fettered by various prejudices and habits and will soon be on their own.  This theme of love is expressed especially in his dramatic writings.  In the first play that he wrote in America, Di muter (The mother), which should be seen as an answer to Strindberg’s The Father (original: Fadren), wrapped up with the theme of love—what kind of love is devoted and true, a mother’s love for her children or the opposite?  The answer is that children’s love is an expression of egoism, but the love of a mother is dictated by fidelity and devotion.  In his one-act play Glik-fargesene (Forgotten luck) of 1904, the problem of love is handled in the environs of intellectuals, and the moral of the story is that the highest degree of love lies in self-sacrifice.  The play Yankl der shmid (Jacob the blacksmith) offered Pinski the opportunity to entrust love to a simpleton, a wanton youth who is drunk with a violent temperament but unable to speak.  Pinski dedicated dozens of plays and stories to love, abstracting from them and not giving any place or time where or when the action in them takes place; he places the man and his wife in the most diverse of situations when loves speaks, chats, discusses, and philosophizes.  Pinski could, though, trot out a gallery of persons who were as if created for abstract love entanglements.  A string of plays from this crop found purchasers among the Gentile directors just as among the Jewish ones, who staged them.  A truly fierce drama which excelled in its well-formed personalities and did not float in the air of cavernous abstraction was Gabri un di froyen (Gabri and the women) of 1908.  The American “West” serves here as the backdrop.  The realistic moment of his dramaturgy is expressed in love imbroglios in numerous other creations, such as the plays: Der letser sakhakl (The bottom line) of 1924 and Opgezogt (Declined) of 1932, in which is reflected the economic crisis of the day as well as other issues.  When Pinski sensed that he had “said everything about the worker that he had to say,” he turned to historical legends and folklore, and he used them as raw material for his poetic, storytelling creations.  A series of short novellas appeared in a book.  Bruriah (Beruriah), the wife of the Tanna Rabbi Meir, was the heroine and title character of one of his short stories.  He particularly rose to the occasion in his stories and dramas taken from material of differing epochs from Jewish history.  The play Miryam fun magdala (Mary Magdalene) in three acts (1911) still breathes with issues surrounding love.  He used history and legend in it.  This play led Pinski to a series of King David plays.  Dovid hameylekh un zayn vayber (King David and his wives) is replete with erotic and all kinds of love.  Subsequent stages in Pinski’s interest in historical themes were his four one-act plays in the David series: Dovid un mikhl (David and Michal), Basheve (Batsheva), Avishag (Avishag), and Avigayl (Abigail).  Pinski’s prose was loaded with emotion and with melodiousness, and it was effective, the result of Pinski’s efforts to sublimate in his Yiddish the biblical Hebrew idiom.

            Pinsk approached in ideological disposition ever more the national stance until he became of the leaders of the Labor Zionist movement in America.  In 1916 he became editor of the journal Der idisher kemfer (The Jewish fighter).  He was chief editor of the daily newspaper Di tsayt (The times), one of the best Yiddish newspapers.  For many years he was a member of the central committee of the Labor Zionist party in the United States, taking part in 1922 in the Berlin world conference of Labor Zionism, and making a trip through a number of European countries and also going as far as the land of Israel.  He participated in all aspects of public Jewish life in America, and his voice was heard by various general Jewish and Zionist tribunes.  He was among the cofounders and leaders of the Yiddish theatrical society of New York and its organ Tealit (Theater-literature).  He published journalistic articles and helped to form Jewish public opinion among organized labor and raised the cultural level of the broad Jewish masses.  Pinski fought against literary trash in theater, in the press, and in the published word generally.  From 1933 he was elected to the high position of president of the great Jewish fraternal order, the National Jewish Labor Alliance, and he held the post with great dignity until he left the United States.  He was president of the Yiddish Cultural Society, founded in 1929.  Over the years 1941-1949, at which point he made aliya to Israel, he was co-editor of the journal Tsukunft (Future) in New York (the other co-editors: Shmuel Niger and Hillel Rogof), and he was among the initiators of Tsiko (Central Yiddish Cultural Organization) and a member of its administration.  He belonged to the initiative group (others: H. Leivick, Shmuel Niger, Yoysef Opatoshu, and Menakhem Boreysho) that established the World Jewish Culture Congress in New York (autumn 1948).  He was the first president of the Yiddish Pen Club.  Already in 1903 after the Kishinev pogrom, Pinski sensed that a revision was necessary in his ideological position until that point.  At the invitation of a committee in Warsaw that was preparing an anthology for the victims of the pogrom, he composed the first act of Di familye tsvi (The family Tsvi).  The Warsaw censor would not allow it to be published.  Later the play appeared in print from the publisher of the foreign committee of the Bund in Geneva, Switzerland, on thin cigarette paper and in a small format so that people might more easily smuggle it into Russia.  Somewhat later the play also appeared from the Bundist published “Di velt” (The world) in Vilna.  Irrespective of the negative criticism of a number of important writers at the time (Perets, Bal-Makhshoves, among others), the play was widely distributed.  It was performed mostly by amateur troupes.  It was performed in Tsarist Russia, although that threatened prison and deportation, and none of the amateurs was condemned to years of incarceration.  It was also staged in Galicia, as well as in other parts of Austria, and in Germany and Switzerland.  Pinski emphasized the tragedy of the destroyed former synagogue, and he deplored the shattering process of the Jewish family and the fateful debate among Bundists, Zionists, and assimilationists, who wanted, each from his own stance, to bring about a resolution of the Jewish question.  In this play, noted Sh. Shazar, “the section involving the great interaction among the generations begins with everyone suddenly opening their eyes all at once to see that the light of idealism and revolution is not only the ken of Bundism or Labor Zionism, but may perhaps, principally, lie in the heart of the old preacher who risks his life to save the Torah scrolls that they not be desecrated.”  “The self-defense would ascribe the influence of Bialik’s ‘Massa nemirov’ [The vision of Nemirov (also translated as: In the city of slaughter)]” which was published with Di familye tsvi, “but I imagine…[that] my tragedy…in Yiddish must have strongly influenced the moods and decisions”—as he explained about himself.  Pinski lived through many disappointments in these years and was unhappy with himself.  He carried around the thought of separating himself from the writer’s profession altogether.  He registered at Columbia University and studied German language and literature there.  The impetus to be a writer that had impelled him to complete Di familye tsvi caused him to be absent at the time of his dissertation defense which was required, and thus he let pass an opportunity to secure an academic title and profession.  The same feeling came over him when he decided to open up his own publishing house and make a living in that manner.  He sustained a better financial basis to support himself, and he became more creative in his literary work.  He supported Yiddish journals, wrote without honorariums, and published in newspapers in America and abroad, as well as in Tsukunft (he would be its co-editor in years to come), Der yud (The Jew), and Der fraynd (The friend), among other serials.  In partnership with Yoysef Shlosberg, he brought out the socialist literary Yidishe vokhnshrift (Yiddish weekly writing).

            Profound ethnic sensibility brought Pinski to write a cycle of messianic dramas.  Later, when his play Der oytser (The treasure) became popular through all Jewish communities across the globe and was performed in “German theaters” and in Yiddish theaters in America, Pinski picked out from the depths of Jewish history a string of heroes who served as Jewish redeemers for salvation.  None of Pinski’s “messiahs” would qualify as a “false messiah.”  He sees them as living people who operate in a living community, and they must struggle against difficulties, overcome their own weaknesses, and lead a people to mountain tops.  His six messiah plays are set in various eras: Der eybiker yid (The eternal Jew), which became a regular part of the repertoire of Habima (in Hebrew) first in Moscow and later in Tel Aviv, is set in the epoch of the destruction of the Temple; Rabi akive un bar kokhbe (Rabbi Akiva and Bar Kokhba) in the Talmudic era after the destruction; Der shturmer meshiekh (The silent messiah) in the Middle Ages; Shloyme molkho un dovid haruveyni (Shlomo Molcho and David Hareuveni) at the time of the Spanish Inquisition; Shapse tsvi un sore (Shabbatai Tsvi and Sarah) in the era of the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648-1649; and Der bal-shem-tov un der gazlen (The Baal-Shem Tov and the robber) which takes place at the time of the rise of Hassidism.  The axis around which his messiah plays are constructed is the struggle between idealism and reality, between longing for salvation and the temptations of ordinary materiality, between the blue heavens of dreams and the blood-splattered paths of uprising and war.  In all of his plays conflicts of an ideological character take place, contradictions among the leaders, between the messiah and the multitudes; Pinski used every detail of the old sources and added elements drawn from his own fantasy where the historical facts or the legends could no longer serve him well.  With the messiah dramas, one might also include his pioneer plays in which he strove to introduce the heroism of the pioneers in the land of Israel.  This group would include: Der koyekh vos boyt (The power that builds) (Tsukunft, 1934), in which the “zeyde” (grandfather) in the first act is the great teacher of Jewish labor in Israel, the creator of the  teaching of “Dat haavoda” (Religion of labor), Arn-Dovid Gordon; the one-act play Di shteyger fun libe (The manner of love) (Idisher kemfer, 1941), an ode to the heroic pioneer who brought life to the wastes of Jewish land.  Pinski also found his way to the broad canvas of the novel.  Already in his novel Der tserisener mentsh (The split personality, 1919-1925), he depicts the assimilated Jews who at the time occupied the place of honor in American Jewry: the fabulously wealthy, bankers, magnates from Wall Street, owners of immense businesses, and gigantic industrialists.  Pinski describes their outward sheen of affluence and elegance, and he penetrates to their internal world and shows the utter poverty and spiritual emptiness of their barren souls.  Against this stratum, Pinski placed the idealistic leaders of Jewish labor who erected elevated goals in life, struggling for the rights of their brothers, and finding satisfaction in working on behalf of the immigrant Jewish masses.  Another Pinski novel is devoted to the issue of estrangement: Dos hoyz fun noyekh edon (The house of Noah Edon).  The title of the novel and the biblical style in its beginning as well as in the conclusion to several chapters is an allusion to “Ele toledot noaḥ” (These are the generations of Noah) from the Bible.  Noah was a sage in his generation, and so is the hero of this novel.  The sons, however, have not followed the path set by their father.  They have been carried away by the rush of business, and money has become their idol.  His wife’s treachery is a general phenomenon, and Noyekh’s home is destroyed.  “His chain was not the only one to be severed.  This is America,” concludes Pinski.  Noyekh sees the answer to this problem in religious discipline and explains that man must subdue the animal that resides within him and must strive to a higher level of humanity.  A bulky work was his novel Shloyme hameylekhs toyzent vayber (King Solomon’s thousand wives), in which Pinski describes across a wide basis the many-sided and colorful personality of King Solomon, his loves, his weaknesses, and the strong features of his character.  With the rise of the state of Israel, he realized his dream of many years, and in 1949 he made aliya to become a resident of the Jewish state.  He settled on Mount Carmel in Haifa, having in 1936 already purchased a plot on which to build a home.  On his eightieth birthday, Pinski was awarded honorary citizenship of Haifa, and one of the streets on Mount Carmel was named for him.  The entire settlement paid tribute to him.  He was elected honorary chairman of the Yiddish Literary Society in Israel.  Despite his advanced age, Pinski remained creatively productive in Israel.  In the drama Kekhol hagoyim (Like all the nations), written in Israel, he expressed his desire that, because of the fallen morale of peoples, which had collapsed during WWII to the precipice of inhumanity, the Jews need become the most moral of people.  The Jews were to become the most morally exalted folk.  He was pulled into weekly life in the state of Israel, and he witnessed her great virtues and also her difficulties.  In his comedy Zi hot shoyn a dire (She already has an apartment), there is genuine dramatic vitality, an abundance of luminance and refined humor which he pulled from real life.  From the young Jewish state, he regularly sent his articles and correspondence pieces to Morgn-zhurnal (Morning journal) and Tog (Day) in New York.  They well up with information and vital interest in everything going on in the world around him.  He contributed work to Tel Aviv’s Dos vort (The word) and wrote a regular column entitled “Lomir, azoy tsu zogn” (Let’s, so to speak), in which he expressed his ideas and thoughts from a conscientious and thinking citizen of the state of Israel.  He sensed special esteem when there began to appear in print in Israel his writings in Hebrew translation and when a number of his works were included in anthologies and readers for young students in the country.  He placed immense hope in the Yiddish department which opened in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.  He believed that with time Yiddish would assume an honored position in the culture of the Jewish state.  In the land of the Tanakh, Pinski returned to his beloved biblical themes.  Among other works, he wrote the tragedy Moyshe un di kushis (Moses and the Negress).  “The theme of Moses,” he wrote in his preface, “has interested me since I was seventeen.  I even began writing about it…in verse in Russian….  The topic has never left me alone.”  Even in the last years of his life, he evinced an interest in mastering themes which had intrigued him over the course of decades.  In Israel he felt the clarity of Moses’ extraordinary personality.  This is also how he composed his plays about King Saul and Samson and Delilah.  Pinski struggled for three years with a difficult illness.  A particularly hard blow befell him with the illness and death of his wife Hodl on March 29, 1959.  Five months after her passing, Pinski left this world.  This was an exceptionally sad day for the settlement and for all Jewish communities throughout the entire world.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2, with a bibliography; Arbeter-ring boyer un tuer (Builders and leaders of the Workmen’s Circle), ed. Y. Yeshurin and Y. Sh. Herts (New York, 1962); Y. Gar and F. Fridman, Biblyografye fun yidishe bikher vegn khurbn un gvure (Bibliography of Yiddish books concerning the Holocaust and heroism) (New York, 1962); A. Goldberg, Undzere dramaturgn (Our playwrights) (New York, 1961); Di goldene keyt, special supplement with contents from the previously published fifty issues (Tel Aviv, 1964); Yankev Glatshteyn, In tokh genumen (In essence) (New York, 1947); Di geshikhte fun bund (The history of the Bund) (New York, 1960), vol. 1, pp. 94-96; Geshikhte fun der tsienistisher arbeter-bavegung fun tsofn-amerike (History of the Zionist labor movement in North America), vol. 2 (New York, 1955); B. Daymondshteyn, Eseyen (Essays) (Tohonga, 1958); A. Zak, In onheyb friling (In the beginning of spring) (Buenos Aires, 1962); Zalmen Zilbertsvayg, Di velt fun yankev gordin (The world of Yankev Gordin) (Tel Aviv, 1964); Mendl Zinger, ed., David pinski, zikhrono liverakha, leyom hashana lifetirat david pinski (Dovid Pinski, may his memory be for a blessing, on the day of the death of Dovid Pinski) (Haifa, 1960); Yontef bleter, ed. Zerubavl, on the Dovid Pinski’s eightieth birthday (Tel Aviv: Yiddish literary and journalist association in Israel, 1952); Yankev Tikman, ed., Tsili adler dertseylt (Celia Adler recounts) (New York, 1959); Avrom-Shmuel Yuris, Kemfer un dikhter (Fighters and poets) (Riga, 1931); Y. Yeshurin, Dovid Pinski, biblyografye (Dovid Pinski, bibliography) (New York, 1961), offprint from Pinski’s Oysgeklibene shriftn (Selected writings), vol. 9 (Buenos Aires: Culture Congress of Argentina, 1961), contents on Pinski in Yiddish books, in Hebrew books, in collections, in readers, in textbooks, in Yiddish encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries, in foreign language encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries, and in foreign language books; Avrom Liessin, Zikhroynes un bilder (Memoirs and images) (New York, 1954); Avrom Lis, Heym un doyer, vegn shrayber un verk (Home and duration, on writers and work) (Tel Aviv: Y. L. Perets Library, 1960); Nakhmen Mayzil, Yitskhok-leybush perets un zayn dor shrayber (Yitskhok-Leybush Perets and his generation of writers) (New York, 1951); Mayzil, Tsurikblikn un perspektivn (Retrospectives and perspectives) (Tel Aviv: Perets Publ., 1962); Sh. Slutski, Avrom reyzen-biblyografye (Avrom Reyzen’s bibliography) (New York, 1956); Pinkex vashe (Records of Warsaw) (Buenos Aires, 1955); Yankev Fikhman, Regnboygn (Rainbow) (Buenos Aires, 1953); Shmerke katsherginski ondenk-bukh (Memorial volume for Shmerke Katsherginski) (Buenos Aires, 1955); Y. Kopilov, Amol un shpeter (Once and later) (Vilna: Altnay, 1932); L. Shpizman, Geshtaltn (Images) (Buenos Aires, 1962); Dovid pinsk tsum tsentn yortsayt (Dovid Pinski on the tenth anniversary of his death) (New York, 1969), 64 pp.; Yizkor, beasor lifetirat david pinski (Remembrance, on the tenth [year] since the death of Dovid Pinski) (Haifa, 1969), 72 pp.  Over the course of sixty-five years in Dovid Pinski’s creative pathway, numerous articles in the Yiddish daily press and periodicals—for performances of his plays, in honor of certain birthdays, and also obituaries in the Yiddish and Hebrew press as well as in foreign language Jewish newspapers throughout the world.

Y. M. Biderman