DOV FRID

DOV FRID (June 2, 1870-December 2, 1966)

            He was born in Moscow three months after his father’s death and therefore received the Jewish name of “Dov, son of Dov.”  His mother remarried in Sosnovitse (Sosnovitsa), a town in Ukraine, and Dov was raised by his grandfather in Moscow.  He studied in a Russian high school.  His grandfather brought a Jewish tutor from Vilna for his grandson to teach him Bible and Talmud.  At age eleven he left to join his mother.  At age thirteen he had already published a lengthy essay in Hamelits (The advocate).  He spent time with Perets in Warsaw, and the latter encouraged him to write.  He later became a major silk manufacturer.  He was a patron of Yiddish writers and in general a philanthropist and a leader in the Moscow Jewish community.  He spent time in prison under the Bolsheviks, and he experienced a miracle fourteen times of not being shot.  Over the years 1921-1932, he lived in Kovno, Lithuania.  In 1933 he made aliya to the land of Israel.  He opened a chemical factory in Jerusalem.  All these years, he never ceased writing (he also wrote in Russian).  His favored genre was the short story in good taste and with slight and refined humor.  He published in many Jewish and Gentile publications throughout the world: in Warsaw’s Haynt (Today), Lodzher tageblat (Lodz daily newspaper), and others in Poland; and in Heymish (Familiar) and Letste nayes (Latest news), among others, in Tel Aviv.  He was the author of several books in Yiddish and Hebrew.  In the last years of his life, he brought out: In a shturmish lebn (In a violent life) (Tel Aviv-Jerusalem, 1958), 240 pp.; Mentshn un tsaytn, skitsn un bilder (People and times. Sketches and images) (Tel Aviv, 1963), 238 pp.

Sources: A. V. Yasni, in Letste nayes (Tel Aviv) (May 30, 1958); Y. Shmulevitsh, in Forverts (New York) (June 3, 1963); Ilustrirte velt-vokh (Tel Aviv) (June 5, 1963); obituary notice in Letste nayes (December 14, 1966).

Benyomen Elis