KHAYIM-AVROM FINKEL

KHAYIM-AVROM FINKEL (November 4, 1887-July 1, 1927)

            A journalist and linguist, he was born in Białystok, and until age thirteen he studied in religious primary school. In 1916 he graduated from Kharkov Politechnic Institute. He debuted in print with a series of articles on proletarian Zionism in the journal Razsvet (Dawn) in Russian in 1905. He later published a series of articles in the illegal and legal press of the Zionist socialist party in Minsk, Mohilev (Mogilev), Kiev, and Odessa. During WWI he was plenipotentiary for Yekopo (Yevreyskiy komitet pomoshchi zhertvam voyny [Jewish Relief Committee for War Victims]) and OZE (Obschestvo zdravookhraneniia evreev [Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population]). He published reportage pieces in Vokh (Week) in Vilna, concerning work among the war refugees. Together with the journalist and community leader Ben-Adir (Avrom Rozin), he published a monthly journal Tsukunft (Future) in Kharkov. After the Russian Revolution, he was one of the principal leaders of Gezerd (All-Union Association for the Agricultural Settlement of Jewish Workers in the USSR) in Ukraine and a member of its central administration. Using such pen names as B. Lyumin and L. Pak, he published articles in: Shtern (Star), Yunge gvardye (Young guard), Yidisher poyer (Jewish farmer), and Di royte velt (The red world), among other serials. Among his books: Yidisher tekhnisher verterbukh, hilfsbukh fare di yidishe proftekhnishe shuln (Yiddish technical dictionary, auxiliary text for the professional-technical schools) (Kharkov: People’s Commissariat for Education, 1922), 75 pp.; Di metrishe sistem fun vog un mos (The metric system for weights and measures) (Kharkov, 1925); Neytike yedies vegn idisher erd-aynordenung (Necessary information concerning Jewish land arrangements) (Kharkov: Gezerd, 1926), 14 pp., translated also into Russian and German.

Source: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3.

Benyomen Elis

[Additional information from: Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), pp. 293-94.]