Jacob Dinezon

February 12, 2019/7 Adar I, 5779 is an auspicious day for us. Today Jewish Storyteller Press published the first English translation of Jacob Dinezon’s 1877 Yiddish novel, The Dark Young Man. Translated by Tina Lunson, and adapted and edited by Scott Hilton Davis, Dinezon’s renowned nineteenth-century Jewish romance is now available to twenty-first-century readers. For me personally, this is the culmination of a sixteen-year effort to revive and rescue Jacob Dinezon’s literary legacy. A highly respected and beloved folk writer during his lifetime, Dinezon’s significant contributions to Jewish literature were obscured by the demise of secular Yiddish following the Holocaust. . . . (Read More)

Over the past fifteen years, as I’ve spent time researching the life and career of the Yiddish author Jacob Dinezon, one piece of information has eluded me: the name of Dinezon’s older sister with whom he lived in Warsaw from the mid-1880s until his death in 1919. Many biographers and memoirists speak of Dinezon’s small apartment in the home of his sister and her family, and an announcement in Warsaw’s Yiddish newspaper, Haynt, reveals the location of Dinezon’s passing: “With deepest sorrow we announce to all family members and friends that Friday the 29th of August, 3 Elul, at 5:20 . . . (Read More)