YISROEL(-DOVID) FINGERMAN

YISROEL(-DOVID) FINGERMAN (b. 1857)

            He was born in Berezovke (Berezovka), Kherson district, Ukraine, to a father who ran a store.  He studied in religious elementary school and in the synagogue study hall.  At age eighteen, he attempted to write a speculative text entitled “Tsiur emunot” (Patterns of faith).  For a time he worked for a fish dealer on a large scale.  In 1891 he made aliya to the land of Israel, where he initially worked in the fields of Rishon-Lezion and later as a teacher.  Due to malaria, he emigrated to Argentina and became a colonist in the colony of Clara.  His journalistic activities began with correspondence pieces in Hatsfira (The siren) and Hamelits (The advocate).  Over the years 1909-1911, he served as editor of the monthly journal Der kolonist kooperator (The colonial cooperative), a publication of the Jewish agrarian federation in Argentina.  His most important work was a long piece, “Di geshikhte fun der yidisher kolonizatsye in argentine” (The history of the Jewish colonization of Argentina), which he began publishing in Di idishe tsaytung (The Jewish newspaper) in Buenos Aires in 1927.  This work embraced the entire epoch of the Argentinian Jewish settlement, beginning in the 1850s.  He also published a pamphlet entitled Di grundlage funem tsienizm (The basic situation of Zionism), and he also had in manuscript form a composition in Hebrew on certain views of Ibn Ezra and his influence on the school of thought of Baruch Spinoza.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3; Y. Botoshanski, in Argentine (Argentina), a collection from Di prese (Buenos Aires, 1938), p. 68; B. Hoykhman, in Argentine, pp. 509-11; Sh. Rozhanski, Dos yidishe gedrukte vort in argentine (The published Yiddish word in Argentina), vol. 1 (Buenos Aires, 1941), pp. 92, 182; P. Kats, Shriftn (Writings), vol. 7 (Buenos Aires, 1947), p. 24; Meyer Burski, in Afn shvel (New York) (January-February 1958).

Benyomen Elis