NOKHUM SHTIF (September 29, 1879-April 7, 1933)
A
philologist, literary historian, and journalist, he was born in Rovno,
Volhynia. He was well known by the pen
name: Bal-Dimyen (Visionary). Until his
bar mitzvah, he studied was a variety of itinerant schoolteachers. In 1894 he entered the third class in senior
high school, but continued reading Hebrew, organizing a group called “Safa berura”
(Chosen language), and studying Talmud (for scholarly ends). After the first Zionist congress in Basel
(1897), he became a Zionist. In 1899 he
studied for a year at the Kiev polytechnical institute. He was a cofounder in 1902 of the radical
Zionist student group, “Molodoy Izrail” (Young Israel). Together with A. Ben-Adir and V. Fabrikant,
in 1903 he organized the founding conference of “Vozrozhdenie” (Renaissance). Shtif “actually [provided] the first extended
justification for the ideology that later became characteristic of the Zionist
socialists.” (Yivo-bleter [Pages from
YIVO] 5 [1935], p. 197) After the
Kishinev pogrom, he was among the leaders of self-defense in Kiev. His first published piece appeared in
1904, and over the years, 1905-1908, he was active the Sejmist party in Kiev,
Vilna, Vitebsk, and Simforopol (after a year in Switzerland whence he fled from
arrest). In this time period, he penned
literary critical articles for Evreiskaia
zhizn’ (Jewish life) in St. Petersburg and ideological-political articles
for the party publications: Di
folks-shtime (The people’s voice) and Di
shtime (The voice). In his literary
pieces, he stressed the influence of the environment on a writer’s works, the
social character of literature, and the aesthetic moment in a work. From this point of view, he sought to revise
the estimation of Sholem Asch, Morris Rozenfeld, Avrom Reyzen, and others.
Over the
years 1910-1914, he lived in Rovno. He
graduated from the Jaroslavl Law School in 1913 and received his doctoral
degree for a dissertation on criminal rights according to the Torah of Moses
and the Talmud. At the same time, he
took up serious research into Yiddish.
His first published work in this field appeared in Pinkes (Records) in Vilna (1912/1913). From the middle of 1914 he was living in
Vilna where he worked as manager of the Kletskin publishing house and served as
editor of Di vokh (The week). These years, 1910-1914, he published a series
of articles in the Yiddish and Russian Jewish press, in which he formulated his
ideas about a Jewish land and about the concept of “goles” (H. galut) or diaspora. He spent the years 1915-1918 in St. Petersburg,
working for the relief organization “Yekopo” (Yevreyskiy komitet pomoshchi zhertvam voyny—“Jewish Relief Committee for War Victims”),
and editing its journal Pomoshch’
(Relief). He was active in “Khevre
mefitse haskole” (Society
for the promotion of Enlightenment) and assisted in introducing Yiddish as a
language of instruction in Jewish schools.
At a conference for the Society in 1916, a major discussion about this
issue took place between Shtif and Ḥaim Naḥman Bialik.
After the February Revolution
(1917), Shtif became one of the founders of the Folks-partey (People’s party),
and together with Yisroel Efroykin, he edited its organ Yidishes folksblat (Jewish daily newspaper) and brought out a
pamphlet on the social and political ideas of the party. He was appointed to the Petrograd Jewish
community council and participated in the meeting of the Jewish community
council in Moscow (1918). That year he
moved to Kiev and worked for Yekopo.
Following the Bolshevik occupation of Kiev in October 1920, Shtif left
Russia and reached Kovno in 1921 where he worked as a lecturer in a Jewish
teachers’ course of study, and in early 1922 he settled in Berlin. There he devoted himself primarily to
researching the Yiddish language and literature.
Shtif was the principal initiator of
the Yiddish Scientific Institute (YIVO) in Vilna. In his pamphlet, Di organizatsye fun der yidisher visnshaft (The organization of
Yiddish scholarship) (Vilna, 1925), he formulated the principles of Yiddish
scholarly activities. He was invited in
1926 to administer the Yiddish department of the Ukrainian Academy of Science
in Kiev. There he developed a broad
scholarship agenda. He was editor of Di yidishe shprakh (The Yiddish
language) (1926-1930), of the department’s Byuleten
(Bulletin) (February 1929), and of Afn
shprakhfront (On the language front) (1931-1933). He was attacked in the Soviet Union for his
“petit-bourgeois Yiddishist attitude” and was compelled to publish an article
entitled “Mayne felers” (My mistakes), in which he wrote: “Since I have become
aware of my mistakes, I have sought to correct them, but I have not been able
to steadily persist.” (Proletarishe fon
[Proletarian banner] in Kiev [April 23, 1932])
He had not demonstrated any “corrections,” and then a year later he was
found dead at his writing desk. Aside
from the aforementioned periodicals, he wrote journalistic, literary critical
articles and linguistic research pieces in: Dos
yudishe folk (The Jewish people) in Vilna (1908), Di yudishe velt (The Jewish world) in Vilna (1914), Di royte velt (The red world) in
Kharkov, Teater-bukh (Theater book)
in Kiev (1927), Haynt (Today) in
Warsaw, Filologishe shriftn (Philological
writings) and Landoy-bukh (Landau
book) from YIVO; Yidishe shtime (Jewish
voice) and Nayes (News) in Kovno; Tsukunft (Future), Dos naye leben (The new life), and Morgn-tsaytung (Morning newspaper) in New York; and a in a series
of publications in Berlin; among other serials.
He wrote 339 works in the fields of linguistics, literary history,
literary criticism, and journalism. He
died in Kiev.
His longer works include: “Teritoryalizm, emigratsye un di
yudishe virklekhkeyt” (Territorialism, emigration, and Jewish reality), Di shtime (Vilna) 2 (1908), pp. 141-60; “Di
fon” (The banner), in Y. l. perets, zamlung tsu zayn 7tn yortsayt (Y. L. Perets, anthology for the seventh anniversary
of his death) (Minsk: Kultur-lige, 1922), pp. 13-25; “Der nekhtn
(tsvantsik yor ash)” (Yesterday, twenty years of [Sholem] Asch), Milgroym (Pomegranate) (Berlin) 2
(1922), pp. 23-28; a bibliographic survey of Yiddish literature in Russia,
1917-1921, in Tsukunft (1923); fragments
of a philological work, in Tsukunft
2, 9 (1924); “Literatur-historishe legendes” (Literary historical legends), in Di royte velt 7-8. 10 (1926); “A
geshribene yidishe biblyotek in a yidish hoyz in venetsye in mitn dem zekhtsentn
yorhundert” (A written Yiddish library in a Jewish house in Venice in the
middle of the sixteenth century), in Tsaytshrift
(Periodical) (Minsk) 1 (1926), pp. 141-50, 2-3 (1926), pp. 525-44; “Naye
materyaln tsu elye haleyvis hamavdl-lid” (New materials on Eliyahu Halevy’s
Hamavdil song), in Shriftn (Writings)
(Kiev) 1 (1928), pp. 148-79; “Y. m. lifshits der leksikograf” (Y. M. Lifshits
the lexicographer), in Di yidishe shprakh
(Kiev) 4-5 (1928), pp. 3-23; “Di sotsyale diferentsyatsye in yidish, di hebreishe
elementn in der shprakh” (The social differentiation in Yiddish, the Hebrew
elements in the language), in Di yidishe
shprakh 4-5 (1929), pp. 1-22; and the like.
Books and pamphlets include: Mayse fun dem frumen rabi khanine, tray ibergegeben
durkh bal-dimyen (Tale of the devout
Rabbi Ḥananiah, faithfully conveyed by Bal-Dimyen) (Moscow: Kletskin, 1917), 20
pp.; Iden un idish oder ver zaynen “idishishten”
un vos vilen zey? (Jews and Yiddish or who are Yiddishists and what do they
want?) (Kiev: Onhoyb, 1919), 103 pp., second printing (Warsaw, 1920); Humanizm in der elterer yidisher literatur,
a kapitl literatur geshikhte (Humanism in older Yiddish literature, a
chapter in literary history) (Kiev: Kultur-life, 1920), 64 pp. (on the title
page, “Bal-Dimyen”), second printing (Berlin, 1922); Yidish un yidishe kultur (Yiddish and Jewish culture) (Kovno:
Likht, 1922), 24 pp.; An entfer di kegner
fun yidish (A reply to the opponents of Yiddish) (Czernowitz, 1922); Pogromen in ukraine (Pogroms in Ukraine)
(Berlin: Vostok, 1923), 111 pp., in 1922 a Russian edition was published; Di eltere yidishe literatur, literarishe
khrestomatye mit an araynfir un derklerungen tsu yedn shrayber (The old
Yiddish literature, a literary reader with an introduction and explanation for
each writer) (Kiev: Kultur-lige, 1929), 284 pp.; Yidishe stilistik, ershte serye (Yiddish stylistics, first series)
(Moscow: Central Publ., Ukrainian Academy of Science, 1930), 172 pp.
His translations include: Z.
Brunin, Privat-handl un
gebroykh-kooperatsye (Private business and cooperatives of use) (Kiev, 1919);
Moritz Güdemann, Idishe
kultur-geshikhte in mitlalter, idn in
daytshland dos xiv un xv yorhundert (Jewish cultural history in the Middle Ages,
Jews in Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries [original: Geschichte des Erziehungswesens und der Cultur der Juden in
Deutschland während des XIV. und XV. Jahrhunderts])
(Berlin: Klal farlag, 1922), 250 pp.; Aron Isak, Avtobyografye (Autobiography) (Berlin: Klal farlag, 1922), 117 pp.;
Shimon Dubnow, Di nayste geshikhte fun
yidishn folk (The more recent history of the Jewish people), vol. 1
(Berlin, 1923), vols. 2-3 (Warsaw, 1926), second edition (1928); Friedrich
Engels, Di antviklung funem sotsyalizm
fun utopye tsu visnshaft (The development of socialism from utopia to
science [original: Die Entwicklung des
Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft]). Other pen names used: Metshtatel, N.
Rovenski, N. Yonin, and A Biblyograf.
Shtif “acquired his reputation,” wrote Zalmen Reyzen, “as
one of our finest and most thorough Yiddish researchers…. In all of his works, original and translated,
he wrote to keep alive Jewishness in style, protecting it from all foreign
forms.”
Sources: Sh. Genrikh, in Kultur un bildung (Moscow) 2-3 (1920); Moyshe Zilberfarb, in Royter pinkes (Warsaw) (1921), pp. 113-30; Yitskhok Shiper,
in Bikher-velt (Warsaw) (1922), p.
44, and 6 (1923); H. Zak, in Nayes
(Kovno) 29 (31) (1923); Dov-Ber Slutski, in Di yidishe shprakh (Kiev) 3-4 (1927); Slutski, in Afn shprakhfront (Kiev) 2 (1935), pp.
69-89; Maks Erik, in Di yidishe shprakh
5-6 (1927); Erik, in Shtern (Minsk) 1
(1930), pp. 84-89; Moyshe Khayimski, in Emes
(Moscow) (June 29, 1929); Dovid Matsi, in Ratnbildurng
(Kiev) 2 (1930); Nekhemye Pereferkovits, in Frimorgn
(Riga) (May 20, 1930); Pereferkovits, in Lodzher
togblat (Lodz) (July 11, 1930); Max Weinreich, in Tsukunft (New York) 3, 12 (1931), 6 (1933); F. Hurvits, Ruvn
Lerner, and Moyshe Maydanski, in Afn
shprakhfront 4 (1932), pp. 43-50; Ayzik Zaretski, in Afn shprakhfront 4 (1932), pp. 48-52; A. Gitlin, in Ratnbildung (Kiev) 3-4 (1932); Yudl
Anikovitsh, in Yivo-bleter
(Vilna) 5 (1933), pp. 226-46, a bibliography; Yisroel-Ber Beylin, in Signal
(New York) 3 (1933); Literarishe bleter (Warsaw) 33, 34 (1933), autobiography;
Moyshe Shalit, in Literarishe bleter 26, 27, 31, 32 (1933), 14-16 (1934);
Shloyme Suskovitsh, in Der shpigl (Buenos Aires) 177-78 (1933); Moyshe
Kamenshteyn and Nokhum Oyslender, in Shtern (Kharkov) (April 9, 1933);
Kalmen Marmor, in Morgn frayhayt (New York) (April 11, 1933); Zev-Volf
Latski-Bertoldi, in Frimorgn (April 13, 1933); Ben-Tsien Goldberg, in Tog
(New York) April 13, 1933); A. Mukdoni, in Morgn zhurnal (New York)
(April 14, 1933); Shmuel Niger, in Tog (April 23, 1933); Niger, Yidishe shrayber fun tsvantsikstn yorhundert
(Yiddish writers of the twentieth century) (New York, 1958), pp. 173-74; Nakhmen Mayzil, in Haynt (Warsaw)
(April 28, 1933); Urye Katsenelenbogen, in Folksblat (Kovno) (May 5,
1933); Menakhem Kadishevitsh, in Shtern (June 9, 1933); Ben-Tsien Kats,
in Idishe shtime (Kovno) (June 26, 1933); Nokhum Oyslender, in Shtern
(July 15, 1933); D. Nusinov, in Afn shprakhfront 2 (1935), pp. 91-96; Yivo-bleter
5 (1935), bibliography; Yudel Mark, in Davke (Buenos Aires) 3 (1952),
pp. 93-101; Ber Borokhov, Shprakh-forshung un literatur-geshikhte (Language research and literary history) (Tel Aviv: Perets
Publ., 1966), pp. 401-6, 418; Michael Astour, Geshikhte fun der frayland-lige un funem teritoryalistishn gedank
(History of the Freeland League and of the territorialist idea) (New York,
1967), see index; Khayim Loytsker, in Sovetish
heymland (Moscow) 12 (1969); Nisn Rozental (A. Ben-Dov), Yidish lebn in ratnfarband (Jewish life
in the Soviet Union) (Tel Aviv: Perets Publ., 1971), pp. 251-62; Ester Rozental-Shnayderman,
Af vegn un umveg, zikhroynes, geshenishn,
perzenlekhkeytn (Along ways and byways, memoirs, events, personalities) (Tel
Aviv, 1978), see index.
Leyzer Podryatshik
[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. 384-85.]
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