ABE-YITSKHOK KRIM

ABE-YITSKHOK KRIM (July 1890-July 12, 1962)

            A scholar and translator, he was born in Pikeln (Pikeliai), Lithuania.  He studied in the local religious elementary school, in Lithuanian yeshivas, and in a Latvian high school.  In 1906 he came to the United States.  He studied, 1913-1916, at Hebrew Union College and at universities in Cincinnati and Philadelphia.  He received his doctor of philosophy degree.  From 1917 he was a Reform rabbi.  For a long period of time, he lived in Newark.  From 1906 he published from time to time translations of Yehuda Shteynberg, Hans Christian Andersen, and Multatuli [pseud. Eduard Douwes Dekker], as well as his own articles, poems, and stories in: Varhayt (Truth), Fraye arbeter shtime (Free voice of labor), Der amerikaner (The American)—including, among other items, a translation of A. Mapu’s Ahavat tsiyon (Love of Zion)—Idisher kemfer (Jewish fighter), Shikago (Chicago), and Nuarker vokhenblat (Newark weekly newspaper) (1911, also under the pen name Feniks.  He published a series of articles under the titles “Dos yudentum als velt religon” (Jewry as a world religion) and “Di foters fun yudentum” (The fathers of Jewry) in Idishe shtime (Jewish voice) in New York; and in Der amerikaner (1923-1924), “Filos dos bukh fun veltshefung” (Philo’s book on the creation of the world) and John Milton, “Der ferlorener gan eydn” (Paradise Lost).  He wrote a great deal in English, mainly on topics concerned with Jewish wisdom.  In Hebrew he published: Hafilosofiya shel yeme habenayim (Philosophy of the Middle Ages) (Newark, 1925), 24 pp.  He died in New York.

Berl Cohen