YOYSEF KAMENETSKI (July 27, 1876-early August 1948)
He was born
in Pinsk. At age fourteen he entered the
Vilna Jewish teachers’ institute and for a short studied at Berlin
University. In 1896 he became a teacher
in Nevel, Byelorussia, where he organized the first strike of local brush-makers. In 1902 he settled in Vilna and worked as a teacher
of history and natural science. He was
one of the organizers of the Jewish section of the Russian Teachers’
Association. Over the years 1908-1915,
he translated poetry and one-act plays for children and published articles on
Jewish pedagogy. He was later active in
the establishment of Jewish schools in a number of cities and was arrested for
this. He wrote several plays, staged
Sholem-Aleichem’s Motl peysi dem khazns
(Motl, son of Peysi the cantor), and translated into Yiddish works by classical
Russian writers: Valentin Zhukovski, Mikhail Lermontov, Nikolai Nekrasov, and Fyodor
Tyutchev, among others. He also graduated
from the Petrov Agricultural Academy and worked as an agronomist in various
positions. In late 1922 he was working
in Moscow as a teacher of geography. He
published popular scientific articles in Lebn
un visnshaft (Life and science) in Vilna (using the pen name Y. Lider) and
in Moscow’s Emes (Truth) and Af di vegn tsu der nayer shul (On the
roads to the new school). In book form: Der grins-gortn (The vegetable garden)
(St. Petersburg: ORT, 1920), 116 pp.; Di
erd, a verkshtub farn mentshn, a khrestomaṭye fun fizisher geografye, in
tsuzamenhang mit der produḳtsye (The earth, a workshop for people, a
reader on physical geography, in connection with production), 3 parts (Moscow:
Central Publ., 1925-1928); Der zig bam
dnyeper (The victory at the Dnieper River) (Moscow: Emes, 1932), 100 pp.; Di natur-oytsres fun der yidisher avtonomer
gegnt (The natural treasures of the Jewish Autonomous Region) (Moscow:
Emes, 1937), 21 pp.; Di yidishe avtonome
gegnt, ekonomish-geografisher etyud (The Jewish Autonomous Region, an
economic-geographic study) (Moscow: Emes, 1939), 79 pp. He translated G. A. Ivanov’s Heftn far zelbshtendike arbetn af geografye
(Notebooks for independent work in geography), 2 parts: 1. (Kiev, 1922), 2.
(Moscow, 1927). He died in Moscow.
Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3; Chone Shmeruk, comp., Pirsumim yehudiim babrit-hamoatsot, 1917-1961 (Jewish publications
in the Soviet Union, 1917-1961) (Jerusalem, 1961), see index; B. Hofman, ed., Toyznt
yor pinsk (1000
years of Pinsk) (New York, 1941), p. 339.
Yekhezkl Lifshits
[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers
(Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 473; 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), p. 316.]
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