MAYER PERKIS

MAYER PERKIS (1888-November 11, 1967)

            He was born in Chichelnik (Chechelnyk), Podolia region, Ukraine.  He received both a Jewish and a general education.  Until 1910 he worked as a Hebrew teacher in Odessa and Zhitomir.  He later lived in Berlin.  Over the years 1911-1917, he lived in New York and Philadelphia, before settling later in Mexico City.  He was a pioneer of Yiddish literature in Mexico.  He began publishing poetry in Russian in Kopeika (Kopek) in Odessa in 1907, later switching to Yiddish.  He published humorous sketches, feature pieces, epigrams, and sketches in: Gut morgn (Good morning) in Odessa; Tog (Day) and Morgn-zhurnal (Morning journal) in New York; and Di idishe velt (The Jewish world) in Philadelphia.  For many years he also contributed to Der veg (The way) in Mexico City.  He work appeared in virtually all of the periodicals and publications in Mexico.  In book form: Matbeyes fun mayn pushke, humoreskes un epigramen (Coins in my tin can, humorous sketches and epigrams) (Mexico City, 1929), 192 pp.  Among his pen names: Mayer Bal-Hanes.

Sources: Yankev Glants, in jubilee publication of Der veg (Mexico City, 1930); Glants, in Der veg (February 8, 1964); Y. Vinyetski, in Der veg (February 22, 1958); Khayim Lazdayski, in Heymish (Tel Aviv) (1960).

Khayim Leyb Fuksc

YITSKHOK PERKOV

YITSKHOK PERKOV (b. August 15, 1870)

           He was born in Boslev (Bohuslav), Kiev district, Ukraine.  Until age thirteen he studied in religious elementary school, later graduating from a Russian school.  He had a talent for drawing and became a photographer.  At age sixteen he wrote (using the pseudonym “A boslever yid” [A Bohuslav Jew]) two articles for Alexander Tsederboym’s Yudisher folks-blat (Jewish people’s newspaper) (1886), departed for Odessa, and joined socialist circles there.  In 1887 he came to London, served as secretary for a time for the International Working Men’s Educational Club, and wrote articles for Arbayter fraynd (Workers’ friend) in 1900.  He wrote reviews of Yiddish theater and other pieces for the London Yiddish press.  In 1912 he was one of the initiators, directors, and (together with Morris Mayer) the literary councilor to the Yiddish theater in London.  He was also a member of the London publishing committee for the Leksikon fun yidishn teater (Handbook of the Yiddish theater).  In book form: Avrom goldfaden, mayne memuarn un zayne briv (Avrom Goldfaden, my memoirs, and his letters) (London, 1908), 30 pp.—in 1926 this pamphlet was republished in London’s daily newspaper, Di post (The mail).

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2; Zalmen Zilbertsvayg, Leksikon fun yidishn teater (Handbook of the Yiddish theater), vol. 3 (New York, 1959).

Leyb Vaserman

Y. PERK

Y. PERK

            He was the author of Tanakh farn folk (Tanakh for the people) (Kaunas, 1939, 1940).  In the mid-1920s he came to Lithuania from Soviet Russia.  He lived in Kovno until 1941 and was a teacher there in a Tarbut school.  His subsequent fate remains unknown.

Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New York, 1986), col. 434, 549.

ARN PERTSIKOVITSH (AHARON PERETS)

ARN PERTSIKOVITSH (AHARON PERETS) (b. 1909)

            He was born in Butrimonys, Kovno district, Lithuania.  He completed his medical degree at Kovno University.  Until WWII he was a practicing gynecologist in Kovno, and in the years of the Nazi occupation during WWII, he was confined in ghettos and concentration camps.  In April 1945 he was liberated from Dachau and until 1946 lived in Germany.  He later made aliya to the state of Israel.  On several occasions he visited the United States, Europe, and South Africa.  He was among the few who published in Yiddish his observations of specifically Jewish medical issues in the ghettos and camps and gave lectures on the same topic in the Kovno ghetto.  His writings appeared in: Lite (Lithuania), vol. 1 (New York, 1951), pp. 1719-36; Yidishe kultur (Jewish culture) in New York; Dorem-afrike (South Africa) in Johannesburg; and Letste nayes (Latest news), among other venues, in Tel Aviv.  In book form: Dem goyrl antkegn, reshimes fun a doktor (Up against fate, a doctor’s lists) (Johannesburg, 1952), 171 pp., a rare volume in Holocaust literature.  He was last living in Eilat as a practicing physician.

Sources: Dr. Sh. Grinhoyz, in Lite (Lithuania), vol. 1 (New York, 1951), p. 1753; Dr. E. Pat, Briv keyn medines-yisroel (Letters to the state of Israel), vol. 3 (Tel Aviv, 1955), p. 93; Meylekh Ravitsh, Mayn leksikon (My lexicon), vol. 3 (Montreal, 1958), pp. 329-30; Biblyografye fun yidishe bikher vegn khurbn un gvure (Bibliography of Yiddish books concerning the Holocaust and heroism) (New York: Yad Vashem and YIVO, 1962), see index.

Khayim Leyb Fuks

MARKUS (MAYER) PERTSOVISKI

MARKUS (MAYER) PERTSOVISKI (d. 1943)

            He was well known in Jewish social circles in Argentina as a cultural leader, teacher, and founder of a Jewish publishing house which brought out numerous books in Yiddish, Hebrew, and other languages.  He contributed to: Idishe tsaytung (Jewish newspaper), Idishe velt (Jewish world), Kolonist-kooperattor (Colonist-cooperative), and Dos idishe lebn (Jewish life), among other publications in Argentina.  In 1907 he published in Dos idishe lebn a long sentimental story drawn from immigrant life: “Zi veynt” (She’s crying).  For the most part it was written on the basis of colonists’ lives.  More recently, there was published in Argentina a collection of his stories under the title Tsvantsik shtiklekh erd (Twenty pieces of land) (Buenos Aires, 1965).

Sources: P. Kats, Geklibene verk (Selected works), vol. 5 (Buenos Aires, 1946); Idishe tsaytung (Buenos Aires) (April 18, 1965).

Leyb Vaserman

YOYSEF PERTSOVSKI

YOYSEF PERTSOVSKI (1898-1969)

            He was a Soviet journalist and art connoisseur who lived in Leningrad. He published articles, reportage pieces, and notes on Jewish heroes, artists, and cultural life in Leningrad after the war years, mostly for Warsaw’s Folks-shtime (Voice of the people) and Moscow’s Sovetish heymland (Soviet homeland).

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), p. 285.

NEKHEMYE PEREFERKOVITS

NEKHEMYE PEREFERKOVITS (January 9, 1871-1940)

            He was born in Stavropol in the Caucasus.  In 1890 he entered St. Petersburg University and studied Semitic languages there.  His literary work began in 1893 in Voskhod (Sunrise), and over the course of twenty years he published there some 200 scholarly, critical, and journalistic articles, among them using the pen names: Al-Khavos, Vostotshnik, and unsigned ones as well.  He also wrote about Jewish history, literature, and philosophy for Russian encyclopedias and for Brockhaus-Efron, Granat, and for the Evreiskaia Entsiklopedia, as well as for various Russian journals.  He published a series of works in Russian, among them: Talmud, ego istoriya i soderzhanie (The Talmud, its history and contents) (St. Petersburg, 1897); Chto takoe “Shulkhan Arukh”? (What is the Shulḥan Arukh?) (St. Petersburg, 1899), 225 pp.; Evreiskie zakony ob inoviertsakh v antisemitskom osvieshchenii (Jewish law concerning gentiles in light of anti-Semitism) (St. Petersburg, 1908), 98 pp.; Religioznye voprosy u sovremennykh evreev v Rossii (Religious questions and contemporary Jews in Russia) (St. Petersburg, 1911), 80 pp.; and Uchebnik evreiskoi religii, dlia srednikh uchebnykh zavedenii (Textbook on the Jewish religion, for secondary educational institutions) (St. Petersburg, 1912), 3 vols.  Under the name “N. Abramov,” he published Russian textbooks.  His magnum opus was the Russian translation of the Talmud, of which eight volumes appeared between 1908 and 1912: the entire Mishna, Tosefta, Mekhilta, Sifra, and Berakhot (Bavli).  After the October Revolution (1917), he left St. Petersburg and settled in Riga, where he worked as a teacher and also began literary activities in the Yiddish language with journalistic and scholarly articles.  He contributed work to: Dos folk (The people) in 1922, Der veg (The way), later Unzer veg (Our way), Letste nayes (Latest news), Frimorgn (Morning), and Naye tsayt (New times)—all in Riga.  He wrote reviews of writings on Jewish philosophy, and he worked on a reader in medieval Yiddish in rabbinical responsa and on a book on “The beginning of Yiddish,” a chapter of which was published in the journal Hateḥiya (The revival) in 1921.  In it he attempted to establish that the Jews in Aragon (Spain) spoke a Germanic language in the thirteenth century, perhaps Gothic, and he tied this language of the Spanish Jews to the Old Yiddish of Italy.  He also authored a dictionary: Hebreizmen in idish, hekher 4000 hebreishe verter un tsitatn (Hebraisms in Yiddish, over 4000 Hebrew words and citations) (Riga, 1929), 300 pp., second edition (Riga, 1931), 300 pp.  His fate was also the fate of his unfinished works: unknown.  We know only that he died in Riga in 1940.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2; M. Erik, in Literarishe bleter (Warsaw) (May 27, 1927); M. Gerts, 25 yor yidishe prese in letland (25 years of the Yiddish press in Latvia) (Riga, 1933).

Benyomen Elis