SHLOYME BEREZIN

SHLOYME BEREZIN

He was born in Medvedits, Poland.  In 1938 he was a research student under Dr. Ts. Shabad in Vilna.  He authored the following piece of research: Yidishe kleyn-industri in vilne (Small Jewish industry in Vilna).

Source: Yedies fun yivo (News from YIVO) (Vilna) 7-8 (July-October 1938).

MOYSHE BEREZIN

MOYSHE BEREZIN (May 9, 1888-March 15, 1973)

The adopted name of Moyshe German, he was born in Kishinev, Bessarabia.  Until age ten he studied in religious primary school, thereafter in a Russian Jewish state school.  In 1905 he was active in the anarchist movement in Russia.  He was arrested and deported (1906) for five years, but with the help of his wife he escaped deportation and in 1911 arrived in the United States.  From 1920 he was living in Philadelphia.  By vocation he was a dental technician.  He was an active leader in the Workmen’s Circle, the “Radical Library,” and the Workers’ Educational Institute.  He was the founder of the anarchist Red Cross of Philadelphia.  He began writing for Russian anarchist serials.  From 1913 to 1952, he wrote for Fraye arbeter shtime (Free voice of labor) on social, communal, and economic problems.  He was the author of a book entitled Fun keytn tsu frayhayt, fartseykhenungen fun an antlofenem politishn katorzhnik (From chains to freedom, notes of a fugitive political convict), edited and with a preface by Moyshe Kats (New York: Anarchist Red Cross, 1916), 200 pp.  He also penned an unpublished drama, “Der falsher emes” (The false truth), which was staged in 1924 in the Yiddish theater.  He also wrote in English.  Among his pen names: Nazreb and M. B.  He died in Philadelphia.

TSHERNE BEREZOVSKI

TSHERNE BEREZOVSKI (b. 1908)

She was born in Grodno, and as a youth went to work in a tailor’s shop.  At age fourteen or fifteen, she became involved in the underground movement.  She was denounced to the authorities, and the illegal party brought her to Minsk in Soviet Russia.  There she made use of every free moment to educate herself.  Her attention was rapidly drawn to her frequent correspondence pieces in the Minsk serial Oktyaber (October), and she was then sent to study in senior high schools.  In 1932 she became editor of the industrial section of Zvezda (Star) in Minsk, newspaper of the central government.  At the same time, she was working in the Yiddish press.  Several years later, she left for Birobidzhan, where she served as contributing editor to Birobidzhaner shtern (Birobidzhan star).  Since 1937-1938, nothing has been heard from her.

Sources: A. Pomerants, “A meydl fun grodne” (A young woman from Grondo), in his Kavkaz (Caucasus) (New York, 1943), pp. 93-96; Grodner opklangen (Buenos Aires) 2 (1948).

DOVID BEREZOVSKI

DOVID BEREZOVSKI (1896-1943)

He was born in Meretsh (Merech), Vilna region, to a father who was a timber merchant and a follower of the Jewish Enlightenment movement.  He graduated from Cohen’s High School in Vilna and studied at German universities and (after the Revolution) in Russia, as well as in Vilna University.  He began writing for student journals, later taking part in the Vilna Yiddish press—primarily for Tog (Day) in Vilna, in which he published feature pieces, articles, and humorous poems under the pseudonyms Dudl and D-l.  He was secretary of the editorial board of the children’s magazines Grininke beymelekh (Little green trees) and Der khaver (The friend), 1919-1922, in which he wrote stories in verse and in prose, poetry, and popular science articles, among much else.  From 1924 until the Red Army invaded in 1939, he edited the unaffiliated daily newspaper Grodner moment (Grodno moment), formerly known as Grodner ekspres (Grodno express).  He established review issues and programs for the theatrical troupes of Grodno and often signed his name “Simkhe Vesosn” (according to Sheftl Zak).  He later worked in the state’s department for popular education, as well as for the Yiddish newspaper in Bialystok.  Later still he worked in a factory.  When the Nazis occupied Grodno and confined the Jews to ghettos, he worked together with his daughter Basya in the office of an infirmary.  In one of the subsequent Aktions, he and his wife and daughter were deported to Treblinka.  His translations in book form include: Mayn kinderheyt (My childhood) by Maxim Gorky [original: Detstvo], part 2 (Vilna: B. A. Kletskin, 1920), pp. 135-299; Di muter (The mother) by Gorky [original; Mat’] (Vilna: B. A. Kletskin, 1922), 502 pp.; and the popular science booklets: Luft (Air), Spartak (Spartacus), Di farshterte simkhe (Frustrated joy), and Der bazigter okean (The ocean subdued), among others.

Sources: Jay Mogil, two letters from Grodno, in Der grodner veker (published by Grodner Relief, New York, March 1940); Yidishe shriftn (Yiddish writings), an anthology (Lodz, 1946); Tsukunft (New York) (February 1946); M. Byalodvorski, in Grodner opklangen (Buenos Aires) 2 (1948), p. 22.

MOYSHE BEREGOVSKI (MOISEI BEREGOVSKY)

MOYSHE BEREGOVSKI (MOISEI BEREGOVSKY) (December 15, 1892-August 12, 1961)

A folklorist and music scholar, he was born in the town of Termakhivka, Ivanoskiy region, Kiev district, Ukraine.  His father Yankl was a private, itinerant teacher in the nearby town of Makarov (Makariv).  Until his bar mitzvah he studied in a “cheder metukan” (improved religious elementary school).  In 1905 he moved to Kiev and took the high school curriculum as an external student.  From 1910 he studied cello, thanks to assistance from teachers who discovered his musical ability.  In 1912 he was playing cello in the Kiev Orchestra.  After graduating from the Kiev Conservatory (attended 1915-1922) and later the Leningrad Conservatory (1922-1924), he devoted himself to musical training in Jewish schools and among working youth, as well as to collecting Jewish musical folklore.  He became choir director and music teacher in the Jewish schools in Kiev (1915-1920), in Leningrad (1922-1924), in the elite Jewish school in the colony of Malakhovka near Moscow (1924-1926), in the Kiev Jewish teachers’ seminary (1926-1928), and in the Pedagogical Technicum (1927-1931). He became an ardent proponent of Jewish musical art, and he was a member of the political-artistic council of the Kiev Jewish musical group “Yidvokans” (Jewish Vocal Ensemble) (1930-1936).  Over those years 1930-1936, he managed the ethnographic section and the office of music folklore at the Institute for Jewish Culture in the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.  He was later the head of the folklore section of the office of the teaching of Soviet Yiddish literature, language, and folklore of the same Academy (1937-1947).  He received in 1944 the academic title: “Candidate in Musical Science.”

While still young, he began collecting and transcribing Jewish folksongs and folk melodies.  He had the opportunity in 1928 to devote himself to work in a more systematic fashion.  As the director of the office of folklore and ethnography at the Kiev Institute for Jewish Culture, he conducted a large-scale collection of materials.  Over the course of ten years, he assembled over 3,000 musical items of Jewish folklore (songs and melodies).  In the late 1940s, when the Institute (already with just an office of Jewish culture) was shut down and its associates arrested, he too fell under arrest. Miraculously, a significant portion of his collections were preserved, and they constitute a rich source on the musical art of the Jewish people. Among his publications:

(1) “Cuiomovni j riznomovni pisni v evrejiv Ukrajiny, Bilorusy j Pol’Sfi,” Etnohrajylnyj visnyk 6(9), pp. 37-51;

(2) “Tsu di oyfgabn fun yidisher muzikalisher folkloristik” (On the publications of Jewish musical folklore studies), in Problemen fun folkloristik (Problems in folklore studies) (Kiev, 1932);

(3) Yidisher muzik-folklor (Jewish music folklore), vol. 1, under the general editorship of M. Viner (Moscow: Proletkult, 1934), 246 pp. (in Yiddish with Roman letters in a Russian edition);

(4) “Kegnzaytike virkungen tsvishn dem ukrainishn un yidishn muzik-folklor” (Mutual influences between Ukrainian and Jewish music folklore), Visnshaft un revolutsye (Science and revolution) (Kiev) 2-6 (April-June, 1935);

(5) “Взаємні впливи в єврей ському і українському музичному фолкльорі” (Mutual influence in Soviet Jewish and Ukrainian musical folklore), Радянська музика (Soviet music) 5 (1936);

(6) Yidishe instrumentale folks-muzik (Jewish instrumental folk music) (Kiev: Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, folklore section, 1937), 28 pp.;

(7) Yiddish folksongs of the Soviet period, in Tvorchestvo narodov SSSR (Works by the peoples of the USSR) (Moscow, 1937), in Russian;

(8) Yidishe folks-lider (Jewish folksongs), with notation (Kiev: Ukrainian state publishers for national minorities, 1938), 532 pp., with Itzik Fefer;

(9) “Yidishe klezmer, zeyer shafn un shteyger” (Jewish musicians, their creations and practices), Sovyetish 12 (1941), pp. 412-50;

(10) Yidishe folklor biz der oktyabr-tsayt (Jewish folklore until October [1917]), a project of the office of Jewish culture in the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (Ufa, 1942);

(11) “Vegn der haynttsaytiger yidisher lid” (On the contemporary Jewish song), Eynikeyt (September 4, 1947);

(12) Yidishe folks-lider, Yiddish text in Roman transcription (Moscow, 1962);

(13) Old Jewish Folk Music: The Collections and Writings of Moshe Beregovski, ed. Mark Slobin (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), 579 pp.;

(14) Purim-shpil, evreiskie narodnye muzykalʹno-teatralʹnye predstavlenii︠a︡ (Purim play, Jewish ethnic musical-theatrical performance) (Kiev: Dukh i litera, 2001), 646 pp.

A number of songs from Beregovsky’s folklore collections were published in Zalmen Skuditski’s two volumes of Folklor-lider (Folklore songs) (Moscow: Emes, 1933, 1936).  His other writings ready for publication were well-known: “Yidishe muzik-folklor” (Jewish music folklore), 2 vols., and “Yidishe folkstents” (Jewish folk dancing) (noted in Yidishe instrumentale folkmuzik, below the main text on pp. 3 and 10).  His wife, Sore Paz, was a doctor.  He died in Kiev.

Sources: A. Blonder, “A bukh, vos men darf popularizirn” (A book that should be popularized), Shtern (Kharkov) 151 (1934); D. Kurland, “Fun fuln hartsn” (With a full heart), Sovetishe literatur (Kiev) (August 1940), p. 136; Kurland, “In kabinet far yidisher kultur” (In the office of Jewish culture), Eynikeyt (Moscow) (July 15, 1942); A. Kahan, “Yidishe shprakhkener bay der arbet” (Jewish polyglot at work) Eynikeyt (Moscow) (April 5, 1943); Kh. L-r (Loytsker), “Tsvey yidishe visnshaftlekhe disertatsyes” (Two scholarly Jewish dissertations), Eynikeyt (Moscow) (February 10, 1944); Y. Nusinov, “Di sovetishe yidishe kultur” (Soviet Jewish culture), Eynikeyt (Moscow) (November 8, 1944); “Kultur-khronik: der kabinet far yidisher kultur” (Cultural chronicle, the office of Jewish culture), Eynikeyt (Moscow) (January 4, 1945); Emkin, “Nayer folklor” (New folklore), Eynikeyt (Moscow) (March 3, 1945); “In der yidisher un hebreisher literatur” in Yiddish and Hebrew literature), Tsukunft (New York) (April 1945); “Yidishe folklor” (Jewish folklore), Eynikeyt (Moscow) (October 2, 1945); “A groyser oyftu in antviklen di yidishe kultur un visnshaft” (A great accomplishment in developing Jewish culture and scholarship), Eynikeyt (Moscow) (April 2, 1946); A. Kahan, “A gelernter a muziker” (a learned musicologist), Eynikeyt (Moscow) (May 16, 1946); P. Novik, Eyrope—tsvishn milkhome un sholem (Europe between war and peace) (New York, 1948), p. 269.

Aleksander Pomerants and Leyzer Ran

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 112; and 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. 54-55.]

Y. BEREBITSHES

Y. BEREBITSHES (August 21, 1902-May 9, 1984)

He was born in Ratnitse (Ratnica), Vilna region.  He studied in religious primary school and in the yeshivas of Suvalk (Suwałki), Bialystok, Lide (Lida), and Vilna.  He was later an auditing student.  He first published in the Hebrew-language journal Hitaḥdut (Unity).  In 1926 he emigrated to Mexico.  He was a regular contributor to Veg (Way).  He published articles in Mexican Yiddish publications.  He also took part in a larger historical project, the anthology Lite (Lithuania) (New York, 1951).  He was the author of Af di rashike vegn fun tsien (On the tumultuous roads of Zion) (Mexico City, 1962), 112 pp.  He died in Mexico City.

[Additional information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 112.]

SH. BER(E)NSHTEYN

SH. BER(E)NSHTEYN

We lack precise biographical details for him.  From published data and the remarks of publishers on the title pages of various editions of his writings, we can say the following: (1) he came from Kamenets-Podolsk (Kamianets-Podilskyi), Ukraine; (2) he signed his name “Sh. Bernshteyn” (with a segel beneath the resh [thus pronounced: Berenshteyn]; and (3) in the early 1880s he had already died.  From his poetry itself, on can see further that he was an educated man and knew Russian and German quite well.  In 1869 there was published in Zhitomir (Zhytomyr) his poetry collection entitled Magazin fun yudishe lider far dem yudishn folk (Storehouse of Yiddish poems for the Jewish people), 84 pp., which was later republished four times: in Warsaw (1880 and 1884) and in Berditshev (1888 and 1891), 73 pp.  Several selections from these poems came out from the publishing house of Morgenshtern (Warsaw, 1902)—entitled Zeks naye yudishe lider fun sh. bernshteyn (Six new Yiddish poems by Sh. Bernshteyn); the undated Shabesdike lider (Sabbath poems), five in number; and Zeltene lider (Rare poems), including “Drunkard with Flask” and five other poems.  In 1903 there was published in Warsaw a short volume of poems by Yitskhok-Mortkhe Vilinberg from Ostrovtse, entitled Dos shreklikhe unglik fun kishenev (The horrific sadness of Kishinev), which included, after the first poem beneath the book’s title, also five poems by Sh. Bernshteyn.

When Magazin fun yudishe lider far dem yudishn folk came out, Kol mevaser (The herald [1869, p. 323]) carried a “bibliographical announcement” concerning the book with a recommendation: “This booklet contains numerous new and beautiful poems from which one can see that Mr. B. has some considerable talent.”  The Magazin included twenty-six poems and eleven epigrams; under three of the last he noted: “from German” and under one “from Russian.”  Also, among the poems there was a citation from Schiller and a motto from Körner’s Tony.  The best poem in the collection, entitled “The Legend or the False Hope,” was written on the motif of Schiller’s Die Hoffnung (The hope).  The third one, according to their current order in the collection, is “A Poem by Mikhl Gordon”—a kind of song of approbation from the eminent Enlightenment poet, who shared a friendship with Berenshteyn and a popularity among the reading public.  Mikhl Gordon compared Berenshteyn’s writing with his own and said: “My own poems are bitter like gall and at times they have a sharp bite, while your poems are soft as butter and most of them—sweet as honey….  I have sung a number of poems, not because I have a nature to sing….  You sing your poems like a bird—singing is in your nature.”  These lines provide a good appraisal of Berenshteyn’s traits as a poet.  He did, indeed, have numerous commonalities with other Enlightenment poets of his generation: “Lament of the Sages” and “Prayer of the Sages” ridiculed Hassidic rabbis; “Deliverance for the Kings” is replete with Enlightenment patriotism for “His Majesty Tsar Alexander,” but aside from a few exceptions, Berenshteyn’s poetry was free of such Enlightenment tendencies; he “sang his poems like a bird.”  For the most part, his poems are close to folksongs, having within them a warmth, gentleness, and tender melancholic philosophy of life.  A great love for the simple toiling people flows from his songs, and not for nothing did people sing and sing again such poems as his, poems such as: “The Little Cradle,” “Young Tears,” “Purim Time,” “How Are You?” and “The Legend”—over the course of two generations.

In 1871 Kol mevaser (issue 21-31) published a theatrical piece entitled R. yakhtse dal gea (R. Yakhtse, beggar on horseback), “a comedy with a romance in five acts” by “Sh. Berenshteyn” (in book form it was published in Odessa in 1872, republished in Kishinev in 1884).  The comedy scoffed at the arrogance of pedigree and concluded with several epigrammatic poems of a social-satirical character.  In the 1860s and 1870s, he wrote articles, human-interest pieces, and satirical poems for Kol mevaser, using the pseudonym “Ani Shilshos bar Yente” (an anagram for Shmuel Berenshteyn; [lit., I am Shilshos son of Yenta), and it was very popular among readers of the newspaper.  His first story, entitled “Di velt hot zikh ibergekert” (The world turned upside down), appeared in Kol mevaser (issue no. 6) in 1870.  His “Fartseykhenungen vegn der shtot podlovits” (Notes on the city of Podlovits), which appeared in Kol mevaser in 1871, had a section entitled “Di vibores” (The elections), Kol mevaser (no. 49), which was later included in Y. Y. Linetski’s collection Dos mishlakhes (The calamity)—“scenes from Jewish life” (Zhitomir, 1875), and it excelled in its sharp satire of the wealthy and the communal leaders of that time.  The city Podlovits figures as well in the preface to a social depiction of his, “A nekome in tsveyen” (Double revenge), Kol mevaser (no. 7-18, 1872), and it evidently occupied for the writer a place much like Kabtsansk for Mendele or Yehupets for Sholem-Aleykhem.  A story of his from the life of the Jewish underworld, entitled “A velt mit kleyne veltelekh” (A world with small worlds), was later published in the newspaper Yisroelik, which Linetski and Goldfaden brought out in Lemberg in 1875-1876.

The likes of Zalmen Reyzen, Y. Tsinberg, and N. Oyslender now identify “Shmuel Berenshteyn” with Sh. Ber(s)nshteyn, author of Magazin fun yudishe lider far dem yudishn folk.  This identifying supposition can be substantiated by: (1) the epigrammatic poems at the end of R. yakhtse and the satirical poems “Ani Shilshos bar Yente” which offer a favorable comparison with a number of verses in Sh. Berenshteyn’s Magazin; and (2) the name “R. Yakhtse” can also be found in the poem “How Are You?” in Magazin.  On the other hand, however, Mikhl Gordon wrote in a note to the poem “My Assent”—“in the booklet called Magazin”—that he republished in the Warsaw edition (1889) of his Yudishe lider: “An enlightened man, a dear soul, Sholem Bernshteyn, may he rest in peace, published in 1868/1869 in Zhitomir his booklet of poems called Magazin.”  If one would assume that Mikhl Gordon made no mistake (the note was written twenty years later) with Bernshteyn’s name, then Shmuel Berenshteyn (Shilshos bar Yente) is an entirely different person.  In any event, it is clear that Shilshos bar Yente was the pseudonym of Shmuel Berenshteyn and not of Dr. Y. L. Kantor, as Sh. L. Tsitron wrote in his Geshikhte fun der yidisher prese (History of the Yiddish press), vol. 1 (Vilna, 1923), p. 52.

Sources: Leo Wiener, The History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1899), pp. 82-83, 85-87; Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1, pp. 376-80; Y. Tsinberg, in Yevreyskii vestnik (1928), p. 248; Y. Entin, Yidishe poetn (Yiddish poets), vol. 1 (New York, 1927), pp. 71-75 (where his name is given as “Sholem”); Morris Basin, Finf hundert yor yidishe poezye (500 years of Yiddish poetry) (New York, 1917), pp. 160-63 (“Sholem”); Nokhum Shtif, Di eltere yidishe literatur (Older Yiddish literature) (Kiev, 1929), pp. 168-75; Z. Zilbertsvayg, Teater-leksikon, vol. 1, p. 209; N. Oyslender, in the anthology Mendele un zayn tsayt (Mendele and his times) (Moscow, 1940), pp. 101, 115-24; Dr. Y. Shatski, in Yivo-bleter (1949), p. 132.

Yitskhok Kharlash