Zelig Melamed

Born in Glukhe in the Russian Empire (today in Lithuania), Zelig Melamed received instruction in modern Hebrew and secular subjects alongside a traditional education. Involved with Ḥibat Tsiyon in his youth, Melamed turned toward Diasporist and Yiddishist ideals in the early twentieth century and soon gained a reputation as someone devoted single-mindedly to nonparty activism on behalf of secular Yiddish culture. In the years before World War I, he worked for the leading Yiddishist publishing house, Vilna’s Kletzkin Farlag, and was involved in the production of the house’s pioneering Yiddish children’s journal Grininke boymelekh. After World War I, Melamed played a leading role in the short-lived but ambitious effort to revive and expand Yiddishist cultural activism on a nonparty basis in Ukraine, Russia, and later Poland under the rubric of the Kultur-Lige (Culture League). He died in New York.