David Pinski

The novelist and writer David Pinski was born in Mogilev (today in Belarus). He moved at age thirteen to Moscow, where, as a teenager, he wrote fiction in Russian, Hebrew, and Yiddish. At first attracted to Zionism, he became a socialist, and after he arrived in Warsaw in 1891, came under the influence of Y. L. Peretz, with whom he edited, with Mordkhe Spektor, the Yiddish monthly Yontev bletlekh (1886–1894). In 1896, Pinski moved to Berlin, where he studied German literature at university, tutored Hebrew, and married Hodel Kaufman, Spektor’s sister-in-law. In 1899 Pinski immigrated to the United States, where he became a pioneer in Yiddish socialist literature, whose works dealt with workers’ struggles, relations between the sexes, biblical legends, and folklore. A frequent lecturer in the United States and Canada, he spoke about Yiddish literature and politics, especially the Zionist socialist movement Po‘ale Tsiyon. Pinski wrote over two hundred works, including more than seventy plays. Among his most popular were Der oytser (The Treasure) and Yankl der shmid (Yankl the Blacksmith), which was made into a movie (1938). He cofounded the Central Yiddish Cultural Organization (CYCO) in 1938. Pinski immigrated to Haifa in 1949 with his wife, fulfilling his dream of making aliyah; he was active in Israeli literary circles and also wrote for Yiddish newspapers in New York.