Abraham Zinger

Abraham Zinger
אברהם זינגער
Portrait of Zinger by W. Twardzicki
Born1864 (1864)
Kapulye, Minsk Governorate, Russian Empire
Died1920 (aged 55–56)
Babroysk, Minsk Governorate, Russian Empire
Spouse
Penina (Paulina) Lowenthal
​
​
(m. 1895)​
Writing career
LanguageHebrew, Yiddish

Abraham Zinger (Hebrew: אברהם זינגער; 1864, Kapulye – 1920, Babroysk) was a Russian-Jewish author, feuilletonist, and translator.

Biography

Zinger was born in Kapulye, Minsk Governorate. Orphaned at the age of 10, he studied at Minsk, Slutsk, Pinsk, Nesvizh, and Mir, meanwhile encountering Haskalah literature.

He worked as a Hebrew teacher in Warsaw from 1888, but fled to his hometown during the Russian withdrawal from Poland in 1915. Amid the pogroms following Operation Minsk, he attempted in 1920 to return to Warsaw, but contracted typhus on the way there. He succumbed to the disease in Bobruisk.

Work

In about 1885, Zinger began writing stories and articles for Hebrew periodicals like Ha-Melitz, Ha-Asif, and Knesset Israel [he]. As a literary critic, he reviewed the Hebrew poetry of I. L. Peretz, among other writers. He later also contributed to the Yiddish journals Der Yud [he], Der Tog [he], and Unzer Leben [pl].

Under the title Ohel Tom, he published in 1896 a Hebrew translation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly. David Ben-Gurion would later cite Zinger's translation as influential on his ideological development.

Partial bibliography

References

  1. ↑ Rapoport, Shabtai (1 July 1895). "Et kenos". Ha-Melitz (in Hebrew). Vol. 35, no. 133. Saint Petersburg.
  2. 1 2 Fogel, Joshua (24 August 2016). "Avrom (Avraham) Zinger". Yiddish Leksikon. Retrieved 4 January 2021.
  3. ↑ "Zinger, Avraam" . Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (in Russian). Vol. 7. Saint Petersburg. 1910. p. 790.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  4. 1 2 Rejzen, Zalman (1926). Leksikon fun der Yidisher literatur, prese un filologye [Lexicon of Yiddish Literature, Press, and Philology] (in Yiddish). Vol. 1. Vilna: Farlag fun B. Kletskin. p. 1083.
  5. ↑ Nachmani, Samson; Chinitz, Nachum, eds. (1962). "Shrayber fun Slutsk un ir gegnt". Pinkas Slutsk u-venoteha [Slutsk Memorial Book] (in Yiddish). New York and Tel-Aviv: Hotza'at va'ad ha-sefer. p. 389.
  6. ↑ Holtzman, Avner (2017). "The Harp by I. L. Peretz and the Controversy over Hebrew Love Poetry". In Molisak, Alina; Ronen, Shoshana (eds.). The Trilingual Literature of Polish Jews from Different Perspectives: In Memory of I. L. Peretz. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 25–26. ISBN 978-1-5275-0267-3.
  7. ↑ Segev, Tom (2019). A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion. Translated by Watzman, Haim. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-1-4299-5184-5.
  8. ↑ Eden, Vivian (29 June 2015). "In Praise of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Who Made Ben-Gurion a Socialist". Haaretz. Archived from the original on August 17, 2019. Retrieved 4 January 2021.