YUDE ARYE-LEYB SHVARTS

YUDE ARYE-LEYB SHVARTS

            He was born in Zlotshev (Zolochiv), Galicia.  He authored a volume of poetry in Hebrew with a parallel text in Yiddish entitled Shire emunim (Poems of fidelity) (Lemberg, 1881), 100 pp.  There is reflected in these poems the poignant struggle between the Galician followers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Orthodox.  Zalmen Reyzen noted that “this book is of considerable cultural historical interest in the fact that the author was a zealous Hassid, perhaps the first Hassid who wrote Yiddish poetry.”  In the second part, he describes the sad condition of Jewish merchants.

Source: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 4.

Berl Cohen