Shloyme Bikl

An essayist, critic, and champion of Yiddish writing, Shloyme Bikl was born in Ustechko, Galicia (present-day Ukraine), and received both a traditional Jewish and a secular education. After earning a law degree at Chernivtsi University in 1922, he lived in Bucharest, where he practiced law and wrote and edited literary publications. He was a regular contributor to the Warsaw weekly Literarishe bleter. After he moved to New York in 1939, Bikl was a leading figure in Yiddish writers’ circles, and he served on the editorial boards of several Yiddish-language newspapers and journals, as well as on the board at YIVO.