VELVL TSHERNIN (b. 1958)
A poet and literary scholar, he was
born in Moscow. He graduated from the Lomonosov Moscow University (Faculty of History,
Ethnography Department). Over the years 1981-1983, he studied in the group “Yidish”
(Yiddish) at the advanced literature course at the Maxim Gorky Literature
Institute. He debuted in print in 1983 with poems in Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland), where he worked for a time on
the editorial board. He went on to publish a series of poetry cycles in Soviet
and other publications. In addition to poetry, he had published a number of
literary critical and popular articles and notes in Yiddish, Russian, and
Hebrew publications. As a supplement to the journal Sovetish heymland 11 (1986), he brought out a booklet of interviews
entitled Dialogn vegn der yidisher kultur
in fssr (Dialogues on Jewish culture in the USSR). He is also the author of
scholarly articles on Yiddish ethnography and linguistics. In 1990 he made
aliya to Israel, studying Judaism at the Shalom Hartman University in Jerusalem
and literature at Bar-Ilan University. He defended a doctoral thesis on the
topic of “elements of ethnic identification in Soviet Yiddish literature from
the late 1950s through the early 1990s.” He was a recipient of the Dovid
Hofshetyn Prize for creative literary work in Yiddish.
His work includes: Dialogn vegn der yidisher kultur in fssr
(Moscow: Sovetski pisatel, 1986), 62 pp.; Beynashmoshes
(Twilight), poems (Tel Aviv: Shul-bukh, 1997), 136 pp.; Alibe-didi (In my opinion), poetry (Tel Aviv: Leivick Publ., 2004),
119 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. 171.
His amazing collection, "Yiddishe Faktazyes" appeared in 2021 (Olniansky Tekst Farlag)....with color plate illustrations.
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