YIRMYEHU (YIRMIYAHU) FRENKEL

YIRMYEHU (YIRMIYAHU) FRENKEL (June 1, 1885-October 11, 1948)

            He was born in Nova-Ukrayinka, Kherson province.  In 1897 he settled with his family in Moshtsisk (Mosciska), Galicia.  In 1902 he joined the Zionist movement and was active on behalf of Hebrew.  He stood at the head of the movement among yeshiva lads in Galicia and Poland, and he co-edited their Hebrew journal Hashaḥar (The dawn).  He studied at the Universities of Lemberg and Vienna and in 1911 received his doctoral degree; he went on to practice as a lawyer in Nay-Sandz (Nowy Sącz).  He spent four years of WWI as an officer in the Austrian army.  From 1919 he was a teacher and later director of the Hebrew high school Yavneh in Lodz.  He contributed to Hebrew and Polish Jewish periodicals in Galicia, such as Lemberger togblat (Lemberg daily newspaper) and Viner morgentsaytung (Vienna morning newspaper) (1919); and in the organs of the Labor Zionists, Yudisher arbayter tsaytung (Jewish workers’ newspaper) in Warsaw, Arbayter vort (Workers’ word) in Cracow, and Folkstsaytung (People’s newspaper) in Czernowitz; among others.  He himself edited two issues of the Hebrew monthly Hashaḥar (1908).  He published a Polish translation of a Russian pamphlet on Palestine by Brodovsky (Lemberg, 1905).  In later years he wrote numerous literary-critical articles and reviews for: Lodzher tageblat (Lodz daily newspaper). Nayer folks-blat (New people’s newspaper), and M. Balaban’s Nowe życie (New life).  He translated into Polish Ḥaim Naḥman Bialik’s “Megilat haesh” (The fire scroll) and the novel Di vos er hot nisht fartrogn (Those whom he could not forebear) by Y. Burla (?).  From 1934-1935, he was a lecturer in Hebrew literature at the Jewish Institute in Warsaw.  He published a number of Hebrew works on education, a commentary on Mendele’s Di klyatshe (The nag) entitled Perush lesusati shel mendele mokher-sefarim (Commentary on Mendele Moykher-Sforim’s horse) (Tel Aviv, 1946), 160 pp., and a selection of works by Aḥad-Haam and Ruvn Broydes’s Hadat vehaḥayim (Religion and life), both published in 1947 and both accompanied by his introduction.  He made aliya to the land of Israel in 1935.  There he published numerous articles and translations.  He died in Tel Aviv.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3; Khayim Leyb Fuks, in Fun noentn over (New York) 3 (1957), p. 262; Sefer haishim (Biographical dictionary) (Tel Aviv, 1937); Getzel Kressel, Leksikon hasifrut haivrit (Handbook of Hebrew literature) (Merḥavya, 1967), p. 687; https://library.osu.edu/projects/hebrew-lexicon/01799.php

Yankev Kahan