MOYSHE-AVROM YOFE

MOYSHE-AVROM YOFE (b. 1859)

            He came from a town near Kovno, Lithuania.  He studied in religious primary school and yeshivas.  In 1897 he immigrated to the United States, and until 1910 he worked as a school teacher at a Brooklyn Talmud-Torah, later serving as a custodian of Jewish dietary law, a small-time merchant, and a business agent.  He was the author of Seyfer toyres hakhinekh, a grindlikhe visenshaftlikhe erklerung vegen ales vos belangṭ tsu kinder ertsihung bay iden, fun dem shtandpunkt fun talmud un medrish (The bible of education, a foundational, scientific explanation of everything that pertains to children’s education for Jews, from the standpoint of the Talmud and Midrash) (New York, 1910), 48 pp., with a preface in Hebrew in which the author dwells upon the sad state of Jewish children’s education in America and lays the blame for it on the parents who chase after the golden calf and neglect their own children, and thus the Jewish people in America are losing the “image of God.”  He also published in: Yidishes tageblat (Jewish daily newspaper), Forverts (Forward), and Kundes (Prankster), and other humorous poems and epigrams, a portion of which were included in his book: Epigram, panorama fun amerikaner yidisher masen fun hoyz un in di gasen (Epigram, a panorama of American Jewish multitudes at home and in the streets) (New York, 1919), 42 pp.  He was also the author of the popular Panorame-suvenirs (Panorama souvenirs), “to sing to the melody ‘Eli eli’” (New York, 1916-1917), 8 pp. each.

Khayim Leyb Fuks