YITSKHOK-LEYB (YITSḤAK-LEIB) BARUKH

YITSKHOK-LEYB (YITSḤAK-LEIB) BARUKH (September 12, 1874-1953)

His earlier family name was Brukhovitsh.  Born in Tauroggen (Tauragė), Lithuania, he studied in religious elementary school and graduated from Bern University.  By trade a Hebrew teacher, first in Kovno and later in the Herzliya High School in Tel Aviv.  He began publishing in Yiddish in Yud (Jew) in 1900, in which he also published a longer treatise on “Di yidishe tipn in der velt-literatur” (Jewish types in world literature); in Di yudishe familye (The Jewish family) 7-8 (1902), he published a translation of Heine’s poem “Jehuda ben Halevy” (R. Yehuda Halevi) together with a biography of Yehuda Halevi.  He also published Yiddish poetry in the anthology Hilf (Assistance) (1903) and in Dos yudishe folk (The Jewish people) (1906).  He debuted in Hebrew with a poem in Aḥiasaf (1894), and later he published poems, stories, critical essays, and translations, among them a translation from Yiddish into Hebrew of Bialik’s Yiddish letters to his wife Manya, which was brought out by “Mosad Bialik” in Jerusalem in 1955, with a preface by Bialik.  He also translated from Yiddish into Hebrew stories by Sholem-Aleykhem and Sholem Ash, as well as Shaul Ginzburg’s Historishe verk (Historical writings) [as Ketavim historiyim (Tel Aviv, 1944)].  He was editor of a number of Hebrew anthologies and the author of the volume Al miftan hamavet (At the threshold of death), among other works.  [He translated several dozen more works—JAF.]

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1; Gazit (Hewn stone), vol. 13, section ג-ד; Who Is Who in World Jewry (New York, 1955).