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
 

A. Yam
[Yakov Avraham Yerukhomovitsh -- Y. A. Merison]


Born on 6 May 1866 in Yevye, Vilna region, Polish Lithuania. Father -- from a rabbinic family, a scholar, lived as a shopkeeper, then became a melamed. Learned in a cheder and at age eight wrote Hebrew songs. He learned in a Nowogrod yeshiva, then in Kovno's Beit Hamedrash. Under the influenced of Lilienblum's "Ha'tot ne'urim", he began sto strive toward educate himself as a poor student in various towns. He concealed his learning of Russian and German and read Haskalah books. For a certain time he was a melamed of a yeshuv, and also was a Hebrew teacher in Vilna and other Litvak cities. Later he became a khoyv-tsion. In 1887 he immigrated to America, where he took the name Merison. He worked for the first months as a jacket sewer in a factory, and then he went to English and Hebrew students. In 1892 he became a medical doctor at Columbia University and has practiced since then as a doctor in New York.

As one of the leaders of the Jewish Anarchist Movement in America, His literary activity in Yiddish began as a close contributor and member of the editorial collegium in "Di varhayt" (1899), and later he became very active as one of the first writers in Yiddish in the field of philosophy, sociology, physiology and pedagogy.

Under the pseudonym of A. Yam, Y. translated Ibsen's dramas "Hedda Gabler" (publisher Mayzel and Co., N.Y., 1910), and "Di froy fun yam" [both plays were issued through the Mayzel Publishing House in 1926 in Ibsen's "Gezamlte verk"].

  • Z. Reyzen -- "Lexicon of Yiddish Literature", Vol. II, pp. 462-69.


 

 

 

 


 

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Adapted from the original Yiddish text found within the  "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre" by Zalmen Zylbercweig, Volume 2, page 948
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