Katzenelenbogen, Uriah
KATZENELENBOGEN, URIAH
KATZENELENBOGEN, URIAH (1885–1980), Yiddish writer, journalist, and translator. Born in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania, he early became a member of the *Bund. His play Kraft un Libe ("Power and Love," 1904) was one of the first examples of Yiddish literary modernism in Vilna. In 1913 he organized a group of the Jewish intelligentsia that stood for closer Jewish political and cultural contacts with other national groups in Lithuania. He edited the Yiddish cultural almanac Lite (1914–22) and the Russian weekly Nash Kraj (1914), where he advocated the multicultural coexistence of Lithuanian Jews and non-Jews. He left Europe in 1927 and taught in Yiddish schools in various cities in North America. He translated numerous works of Lithuanian, Belorussian, and Latvian literature into Yiddish. His major work was a unique collection of 600 Baltic folksongs in Yiddish translation, Daynes: Litvishe and Letishe Folkslider ("Daynes: Lithuanian and Latvian Folksongs," 1930, 19362). He edited the massive yizkor-book of Lithuania, Lite (1951).
bibliography:
Kh.M. Kayzerman-Vital, Yidishe Dikhter in Kanade (1934), 149–52; lnyl, 8 (1981), 124–5.
[Mindaugas Kvietkauskas (2nd ed.)]