ZEV-VOLF PERLMAN

ZEV-VOLF PERLMAN (b. July 12, 1871)

            He was born in Tukum (Tukums), Courland, Latvia.  He attended religious elementary school, a Mitau (Jelgava) high school, University of Berlin, and the Berlin-based school of “Wissenschaft des Judentums” (Science of Judaism).  In 1896 he graduated with a medical degree.  Together with Chaim Weitzman and Nachman Sirkin, he belonged to a student group in Berlin.  At that time he was a correspondent for Algemeine Zeitung des Judentums (General newspaper of Judaism) and for Ost und west (East and West).  He published in German in them stories with translations from Sh. Frug’s poetry.  During WWI he served as a military doctor in the Russian rehabilitation center in Samara Province.  He published articles and poetry in Yiddish newspapers and contributed to Folks gezund (People’s health), in which he placed a series of essays entitled “Obergloybn in meditsin” (Superstition in medicine), “Iber taneysim” (On fasts), and the like.  In book form: Heylkraft fun medikamentn, a historish meditsinishe ophandlung (The healing power of medicine, a historical medical treatment) (Vilna: Tomor, 1933), 44 pp.  He also penned a play Miriam (Mariamne the Hasmonean) and Konnina (images of Jewish life), and he also left in manuscript a translation into Yiddish of Goethe’s Faust.  He died in Vilna on the eve of WWII.

Sources: Information from D. Abramovitsh in New York; A. Y. Goldshmid, in Vilne (Vilna), anthology (New York, 1935), pp. 398-411; A. Mukdoni, in Morgn-zhurnal (New York) (April 3, 1935).

Benyomen Elis