Arkadii Georgevich Gornfeld

Born in Sevastopol (Crimea), Arkadii Georgevich Gornfeld was given a traditional Jewish education but grew up in a Russian intelligentsia milieu. Surviving a debilitating childhood disease that left him permanently disabled, he completed gymnasium and then studied law at Kharkov University (like his father) as well as psychology and philosophy at the University of Berlin with Moritz Lazarus. In 1893, Gornfeld moved to St. Petersburg to work as a literary critic and journalist, most notably for the Russian liberal journal Russkoe bogatsvo, and the Jewish publications Voskhod, Evreiskii mir, and Evreiskii al’manakh. He reviewed Jewish literature in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian; wrote about Jewish culture; was on the editorial staff of the Evreiskaia entsiklopediia (Jewish Encyclopedia, 1908–1913); and translated Jewish authors into Russian.