Silberbusch, David Isaiah

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SILBERBUSCH, DAVID ISAIAH

SILBERBUSCH, DAVID ISAIAH (1854–1936), Hebrew and Yiddish editor and short-story writer. Born in Zaleszczyki, Galicia, his first work appeared in P. Smolenskin's weekly Ha-Mabbit in 1878. Together with Ẓevi Eleazar Teller, he published a Hebrew monthly Ha-Or in 1882 in Botoşani (Romania), where he lived until he moved to Vienna after World War i. In 1934 he settled in Palestine.

One of his stories, Dimat Ashukim ("The Tear of the Oppressed," 1887), deals with the persecution of Romanian Jews in the 1880s. It was one of the first stories in modern Hebrew literature to depict the poverty, disgrace, and degeneracy of Eastern European life and to suggest that Ereẓ Israel was the only solution. His memoirs appeared in Mi-Pinkas Zikhronotai (1936) and Mentshen und Geshe'enishn (1931). He wrote numerous short stories. Only one volume of his Ketavim Nivḥarim ("Selected Works," 1920) appeared.

bibliography:

D. Sadan, Avnei Boḥan (1951), 23–28; Waxman, Literature, 4 (19602), 150.

[Gedalyah Elkoshi]