NOKHUM RUBINSHTEYN

NOKHUM RUBINSHTEYN (1902-1938)

            He was a bibliographer, born in Poland in a working-class family. He moved to Byelorussia from Poland in 1920 and settled in Minsk. He studied at the Minsk Jewish Pedagogical Technical School. Upon graduation, he started work as a bibliographer in the Y. L. Perets Library in Minsk, and around 1930 he became the director of Yiddish division of Byelorussia’s Lenin State Library. He also worked for years on a listing of Yiddish literature for the nineteenth century, but he was unable to successfully complete it, but he was not allowed to complete it, as he was purged in 1937, and little is known of his subsequent fate. He contributed to bibliographic work appearing in: Shtern (Star), Tsaytshrift (Periodical), Biblyologisher zamlbukh (Bibliological collection), and Afn virtshaftlekhn front (On the scientific front). Other important writings: Biblyotek-arbet, kurtser hantbukh far yidishe biblyotek-tuer (Library work, a short handbook for library workers) (Moscow: Central People’s Publishers, USSR, 1927), 127 pp.; “Sholem-aleykhem-iberzetsungen in sovetnfarband” (Sholem-Aleichem translations in the Soviet Union), Tsaytshrift 5 (1931), pp. 88-91; “10-teglekher oryentir-byuleten far rekomentirte un nit-rekomendirte bikher” (Ten daily landmark bulletins for recommended and unrecommended books) (Minsk, 1932); Yidish-vaysrusisher tashn-verterbukh (Yiddish-Byelorussian pocket dictionary), with Shmuel-Nokhum Plavnik (Minsk: Byelorussian Academy of Sciences, 1932), 218 pp.; Dos yidishe bukh in sovetnfarband (The Yiddish book in the Soviet Union) for the years 1932-1935 (Minsk: State library and bibliographic institute of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, 1933-1936), 4 vols.—his name was omitted from this work; “Di literarishe-kinstlerishe bikher-produktsye af yidish in 1934” (The literary and artistic book production in Yiddish for 1934), Shtern (Minsk) 5-6 (1935), pp. 224-30.

Sources: Chone Shmeruk, comp., Pirsumim yehudiim babrit-hamoatsot, 1917-1961 (Jewish publications in the Soviet Union, 1917-1961) (Jerusalem, 1961), index; Sovetish heymland (Moscow) 12 (1972), p. 181.

Dr. Avrom Grinboym

[Additional information from: 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), pp. 359-60.]