Alexander Kapel

Born in Lekhavitsh, Russian Empire (today Lyakhavichy, Belarus), Alexander Kapel received a traditional education. In 1894, he moved to Pinsk, where he became involved with the nascent Zionist workers’ movement. Kapel also began studying philosophy, literature, and drama, which took him to many cities across Europe, and in 1909, he received a doctorate from the University of Bern after completing a dissertation on labor law related to factory inspections. Kapel then moved to Warsaw, where he began writing Yiddish theater criticism under the pseudonym Alexander Mukdoyni. He returned to the Russian Empire and lived there through the Bolshevik Revolution and ensuing civil war; after helping establish Yiddishist institutions in newly independent Lithuania, he immigrated to New York in 1922. A regular contributor to Morgn Zhurnal, among many other papers in the city, Kapel died in New York.