AVROM RINTSLER

AVROM RINTSLER (b. 1923-November 20, 2008)

            He was born in Dorna-Vatra (Vatra Dornei), Romania.  WWII interrupted his studies at a Romanian middle school.  He was interned for four years in a concentration camp in Transnistria.  In 1944 he studied Yiddish with Khayim Giniger in a Soviet Jewish middle school in Czernowitz.  He debuted in print with a poem in Bukareshter zamlbikher (Bucharest collections) (1947).  From 1949 he was living in Israel.  He was a cofounder of the writers’ group “Yung-yisroel” (Young Israel) in 1951 and contributed to all of its anthologies.  After 1956 he ceased publishing.  Rintsler was a belated modernist.  His cosmopolitan approach to Yiddish (Yung-yisroel, 1956), his international vocabulary, and his free rhythms and “incomprehensibility” were the boldest identification marks of his direction in poetry.  His roughly two dozen published poems appeared in Nayvelt (New York) in Tel Aviv (1950), in the three volumes of Yung-yisroel, and in Di goldene keyt (The golden chain) (issues 7, 11, 13).  “Poetically and intellectually,” wrote Itsik Manger, “he is the most restless of the entire [Yung-yisroel] group.  His struggle with the poetic word is ambitious.  He has an account to settle with himself and with the world….  With Rintsler the question marks are clearer and more poetic than all other marks.”

Sources: Meylekh Ravitsh, Mayn leksikon (My lexicon), vol. 3 (Montreal, 1958); Shmuel Niger, in Tog (New York) (January 3, 1955); Niger, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (New York) (April 24, 1955); Arn Leyeles, in Tog (January 29, 1955); Yankev Glatshteyn, in Tog (February 11, 1955); Yankev Botoshanski, in Di prese (Buenos Aires) (March 3, 1955); Itsik Manger, in Veker (New York) (May 1, 1955); Yitskhok Paner, in Lebns-fragn (Tel Aviv) (April-May 1956); Y. Varshavski (Yitskhok Bashevis), in Forverts (New York) (January 28, 1958); Shloyme Bikl, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (May 11, 1958); D. H. Roskes, in Yugntruf (New York) 34 (1976).

Dr. David Roskies