MAGNUS KRINSKI

MAGNUS KRINSKI (1863-October 18, 1916)

            He was born with the Jewish name Yankev in Ruzhinoy (Ruzhany), Grodno region.  He studied in yeshivas until age nineteen, thereafter taking up a general education.  He worked as a Hebrew teacher in Kiev, Bialystok, and Lodz where he opened a four-class school for boys.  From 1903 he was living in Warsaw.  In 1908 he established there the first Jewish high school with Russian as the language of instruction (later, Polish).  He authored many Hebrew textbooks—one of them, Reshit daat (The beginning of faith), went through 150 printings.  He published, 1907-1908, the first Yiddish illustrated weekly newspaper in Russian-Poland, Roman-tsaytung (Fiction newspaper), edited by Avrom-Leyb Yakubovits, and he was one of the founders of the daily Moment (Moment).  For both newspapers, he wrote articles on Jewish education, Yiddish orthography, and the like.  He edited two works by A. B. Rozenshteyn: Literatur-visenshaft, lehrbukh far di yidishe un algemeyne literatur-teorye mit a groyse zamlung mustern fun di beste yidishe poeten un prozaiker (Literary scholarship, a textbook of Jewish and general literary theory with a large selection of specimens of the best Yiddish poets and prose writers) (Warsaw: Bikher-far-ale, 1908), 68 pp.; and Teoretishe un praktishe arifmetik, a folshtendiger kurs tsum oyslernen ... arifmetiḳ in a kurtser tsayt far shul un hoyz (Theoretical and practical arithmetic, a thorough course to master…arithmetic in a short time for school and home) (Warsaw: Bikher-far-ale, 1909).  In book form: Das yisroel (Religion of Israel), 2 printings (Hebrew-Russian and Hebrew-Yiddish textbook); Muser hayaades, moral dem yudenthums, gezamlt fun tana”kh, talmud un midrashim, mit unterhaltungen un erklerungen (Jewish morality, selected from Bible, Talmud, and midrashim, with support and explanations) (Warsaw: Haor, 1904), 98 pp.; Der yidish-lehrer (The Yiddish teacher) (Warsaw: Haor, 1906), 138 pp., fourth printing (1908), new printing (1920); Der humorist, yidishe vitsen un anekdoten (The humorist, Jewish jokes and anecdotes) (Warsaw: Bikher-far-ale, 1908), 46 pp., using the pen name M. Osipov; Ertsihung, finf kapitlekh iber der ertsihung fun yidishe kinder (Education, five chapters on the education of Jewish children) (Warsaw: Bikher-far-ale, 1908), 51 pp.  In his Hebrew publisher Haor (The light), Krinski had a Yiddish division “Bikher-far-ale” (Books for all), and under this imprint, he published a series of books by Sholem-Aleichem, works by Avrom Reyzen, Dovid Kasel, Dr. A. Kapel, B. Kaplan, and others.  He died in Warsaw.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3; Zigmunt Turkov, Fragmentn fun mayn lebn (Fragments from my life) (Buenos Aires: Central Publisher of Polish Jews in Argentina, 1951), pp. 161-70; Ber Kutsher, Geven amol varshe (As Warsaw once was) (Paris, 1955), p. 80; Pinkes varshe (Records of Warsaw) (Buenos Aires, 1955), p. 821.

Berl Cohen