ZALMEN SHNEUR-OKUN (1892-1952)
He was a
folklorist, teacher, and playwright, born in Rohatshov (Rahachow), Byelorussia,
into the family of a ritual slaughterer who primarily occupied himself as a
farmer and gardener. After religious
elementary school, he attended yeshivas.
In 1919 he moved to Odessa, fell into a Yiddish cultural environment,
and became acquainted with Ḥaim-Naḥman Bialik. He received his higher education in Odessa,
became a teacher of Yiddish language and literature, and made appearances as a
lecturer and public storyteller of works by Yiddish writers, and he organized
circles and independent Yiddish theatrical events, adapted plays for the Odessa
Yiddish state theater, collected folklore, worked in the museum of Yiddish
culture named for Mendele Moykher-Sforim, and became director of the Yiddish
academic library. From his colossal
folklore collection, he managed only to publish one booklet on anti-religious
themes. Over the course of many years,
he was friendly with Shloyme Mikhoels, and when the Moscow State Yiddish Theatre
would go on tour and appear in Odessa (and the theater came to Odessa every
summer), Mikhoels would disappear within an hour to be with his friend. Fortuitously Mikhoels, when the war started
in 1941 and Shneur had to leave Odessa, invited him to Moscow, provided him
with a small room in the building of his theater, and Shneur became the
literary director of “Goset” (Moscow State Jewish
Theatre). With the theater’s
collective, he was evacuated to Tashkent.
When Goset returned to Moscow, Mikhoels and Shneur began work on a
pageant entitled “Freylekhs” (Cheerful tune).
Shneur’s folklore collection, his extraordinary artistic taste, and his great
erudition were held in fine repute. The
pageant enjoyed phenomenal success and was the last flash of Moscow’s Goset; it
was consequently the last creative achievement of this writer from Odessa. When the theater was closed, Shneur was
arrested and deported to a camp in the North.
He never returned from there. His
written work: Antireligyeze mayses un
vertlekh (Anti-religious stories and sayings) (Moscow: Emes, 1939), 42 pp.
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. 387-88.
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