feldman/aaron

Lives in the Yiddish Theatre
SHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF THOSE INVOLVED IN THE Yiddish THEATRE
aS DESCRIBED IN zALMEN zYLBERCWEIG'S "lEKSIKON FUN YIDISHN TEATER"
1931-1969

Aaron Feldman

Born on 12 July 1880 in Pinsk, White Russia, into a well-to-do family. His grandfather was the bl imyu rabbi in Pohost Zagoradski. He received a strong religious education, but at the same time also a secular education with a Hebrew and Russian teacher, and at age sixteen completed the Russian folkshul. Then he became an extern, and devoted himself fully to Russian literature. For a short time he was in Odessa, where he learned there in the "Handverker shul". Due to the political themes, he was forced to withdraw from learning, and he returned home, taking an active part in the Socialist-Unionist party, wrote proclamations and disseminated literature. For a short time he served in the military. He wrote in the Pinsk page "Pinski listok" short stories and gave "lectures" in Russian.

After his marriage to a prominent talmidah, Rukhel, who had him gave him much encouragement to write, they had in 1913 immigrated to America and settled in Brooklyn, New York, where they suffered hardships, until he entered into work in a shop. F. studied in a teacher's seminary to become a teacher, but he went on to become active in a Union as a secretary of Local 156, afterwards in Local 5 and took to writing in the union organ "Baginen", a short time later putting out, with a group of writers, the monthly journal "Tsuzamen (Together)", which later became a cultural publication that he edited until 1945.

F. in the span of years published in many periodical editions, stories and novels and also plays and issued a collection of novels "Durkh teg un nekht" (publisher "Tsuzamen", N. Y., 1927), and "In fraye shoh'n" (N. Y., 1935).

F. wrote very many plays, among them:

"Mitn man oder mit di kinder"", a drama in three acts, [printed in "Tsuzamen" and in "Di idishe velt", Philadelphia.]

"Der blyask fun gold", a drama in three acts [printed in "Tsuzamen"], performed in the "Lyric" Theatre by Kanapov.

"Likht un shotn", a drama in three acts.

"Farshpetikt", a drama in three acts (printed in "Tsuzamen", 1928), "A tseshterter plan", a drama in three acts with an epilogue (printed in "Tsuzamen", N' 1, 2, 3, 1931), "Fartserter kbud in 7 sheh", one-acter (printed in "Tsuzamen"), and the one-acters "Di naye shkhnim", "In park", "In a leybor byuro", which were never printed and never performed, and "Zayn shuld", which was staged by amateurs.

F. also wrote the novels "Der hebreysher lerer" and "Farshpetikt" (printed in the Philadelphia "Di idishe velt"), and "Di fanatishe merder" that he had written as a young student and published in an adapted form, in 1939, in Montreal's "Kanader odler".

On 17 February 1952 F. passed away in New York.

Sh. E. and Sh. E. from his father-in-law Goldshmidt.

Z. Reyzen -- "Lexicon of Yiddish Literature", Vilna, 1929, Volume III, pp. 122-123.
"Lexicon of the New Yiddish Literature", New York, 1968, Vol. 7.

Adapted from the original Yiddish text found within the "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre" by Zalmen Zylbercweig, Volume 6, page 5083.