(1891–1938), Soviet official. Genrikh Grigor’evich Iagoda (first known as Genokh Gershevich; last name also rendered Yagoda), was born in Iaroslavl’ province to the family of a Jewish artisan who made his living engraving and repairing jewels and watches. In his hometown, Iagoda completed only the f...
(1896–1937), military figure. Iona Iakir (also rendered Yona Yakir) was born in Kishinev to the family of a pharmacist. In 1913, he graduated from a Kishinev professional school and continued his studies at the University of Basel in Switzerland. During World War I, he returned to Russia and studied...
(1912–1972), Russian-language writer. Boris Iampol’skii was born and raised on the Jewish outskirts of the provincial Ukrainian town of Belaia Tserkov’, where his father worked at a mill and his mother owned a small dry goods store. Although Iampol’skii left home in 1927, the impressions of his Jewi...
(1895–1984), plastic artist, architect, and art theorist. Marcel Iancu (Janco) was born in Bucharest. Even as a youth he contributed to the Simbolul review, and had occasion to meet Tristan Tzara and Ion Vinea. He also studied painting and drawing with Iosif Iser. A pioneer of the avant-garde moveme...
(1896–1966), Soviet mathematician who specialized in logic and the history of mathematics. Ianovskaia was born Sof’ia Neimark in Pruzhany, now Belarus, the daughter of an accountant. She grew up in Odessa and attended a classical gymnasium. During the revolution, she was a student at the Odessa High...
(Eng. and Fr., Jassy; Yid., Yos; Heb., Yas), town in Moldavia (northeastern Romania) on the Bahlui River; an important trading center with links to Bucovina, Bessarabia, Ukraine, and Russia; capital of the former principality of Moldavia (1565–1862). The largest and most important Jewish community o...
Tenth-century traveler who journeyed from Tortosa (Spain) through Central and Eastern Europe. Some of the written impressions of Ibrāhīm ibn Ya‘qūb (more fully, Ibrāhīm ibn Ya‘qūb al-Isrā’ilī al-Turtushi) survive through later Arabic sources. The original work was probably a report drafted for the U...
Extremely wealthy Jewish dzierżawcy (estate lessees) in Lithuania. Presumably born at the turn of the eighteenth century, Shmuel (known in Polish as Szmojło) and his younger brother Yoysef Gdalye (known as Gdal), were the sons of a businessman from Ołyka on the Radziwiłł estates in Volhynia. In 1726...
Daily Zionist newspaper in Yiddish, published in Kovno (Kaunas) from 21 July 1919 until 1 August 1940. Although formally the organ of the General Zionists, Di idishe shtime (The Jewish Voice) quickly became the main mouthpiece of Lithuanian Jewry and a platform for literary figures and publicists of...
(1869–1949), writer, poet, critic, and editor. Hugó Ignotus’s father, Leo Veigelsberg (1846–1907) was a publicist and editor in chief of the leading German-language Hungarian daily Pester Lloyd. Ignotus (he formally adopted this pseudonym) was born in Pest but spent his childhood with his maternal g...
(1742–1801), rabbi and halakhist. Born into a distinguished rabbinic family from Buczacz (Galicia), by age nine Meshulam ben Shimshon Igra had already presented a complex halakhic discourse in the study hall of the famous community of Brody. By age 17 he was appointed rabbi of Tysmenitsa (now Ukr.,...
(1897–1937), Russian writer. With Evgenii Petrov, Il’ia Il’f (originally surnamed Fainzil’berg) wrote some of Soviet Russia’s most exuberant satires. Their two novels, Dvenadtsat’ stul’ev (The Twelve Chairs; 1928) and Zolotoi telenok (The Little Golden Calf; 1931), slipped past censorship to become...
(1889–1942?), Yiddish and Polish author and critic. Shmuel Yankev Imber was born in the provincial town of Jezierna in eastern Galicia; his father was Shemaryahu Imber, a maskil Zionist author and nephew of Naftali Herz Imber (who wrote “Hatikvah”). In addition to obtaining a traditional Jewish educ...
Imperial Russia and other areas of Eastern Europe did not become fully industrialized until the end of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, even in its earliest stages, Jews played prominent roles in industry. The two main reasons for this were first, the emergence of a Jewish bourgeoisie, some of...
(1898–1968), physicist. The son of a shoeshop owner, Leopold Infeld was born in Kraków. He studied at the Jagiellonian University with Władysław Natanson between 1916 and 1921 and was later able to study briefly in Berlin. Infeld was an assistant to the chair of theoretical physics at the Jagielloni...
Since the Talmudic period, Jewish tradition and law have regarded the denunciation of Jews to non-Jewish rulers, even for deplorable or sinful behavior, as a grave offense, to be condemned and combated. This attitude is already evident in one of the 18 benedictions in the daily Amidah prayer. Inform...
A scholarly institution attached to the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and specializing in Jewish studies, the Institute of Jewish Proletarian Culture (Rus., Institut Evreiskoi Proletarskoi Kul’tury; IEPK) was founded in 1929 as a reorganization of the academy’s Chair (Department) of Jewish Culture....
(1880–1960), physicist. A graduate of the Saint Petersburg Institute of Technology (1902), Abram Ioffe began his scientific career in Munich, where he worked as a doctoral student in the laboratory of Wilhelm Röntgen, the first Nobel laureate in physics. Ioffe’s collaboration with Röntgen on studies...
(Yeraḥmi’el Ze‘ev Volf; 1898–1979), Soviet microbiologist and immunologist. Born in the town of Mglin, Chernigov province, in the Pale, Vladimir Ioffe grew up in Perm. The education given in the Ioffe home was Jewish in character. The family read books on Jewish history and culture, written mostly i...
(1881–1958), painter and graphic artist. Born in Bucharest, Iosif Iser moved with his family to Ploieşti, where he completed his secondary education and showed early artistic promise. Beginning in 1899, he studied painting at the Royal Academy of Arts in Munich, and had his first personal show upon...
(1520?–1572), rabbi and yeshiva head in Kraków, considered one of the greatest Ashkenazic legalists; known by the acronym Rema’. Mosheh Isserles studied with his father, a leader of the Kraków community, but his principal teacher was Shalom Shakhnah, the head of the Lublin yeshiva, who was the offic...
(1892–1954), artist. Solomon Iudovin (or in Yiddish, Yudovin) was born in the village of Beshenkovichi near Vitebsk, into a family of artisans. His first art teacher, beginning in 1906, was Yehudah Pen. In 1910 Iudovin moved to Saint Petersburg, where he studied initially at the School of the Societ...
(1868–1927), fiction writer and playwright. Semen Solomonovich Iushkevich grew up amid Odessa’s multiethnic population, which remained as a background in his literary imagination throughout his life. Acculturated urbanized Jews were his characters of choice. After marrying at 17, Iushkevich left hom...
(Formerly Stanyslaviv; Pol., Stanisławów; Ger., Stanislau; Rus., Stanislav), city in Ukraine. Jews first settled in Stanisławów just after its establishment in 1654; provisions for the community’s autonomy were guaranteed by the town’s owner in 1662. By 1736, Jews constituted 1,470 of the town’s 3,3...
(Also ‘Ivri anokhi), weekly Hebrew publication, issued between 1865 and 1890. In order to avoid the difficulty of obtaining a license for a weekly publication, the editors employed the common tactic of alternating the title each week between Ha-‘Ivri (The Hebrew) and ‘Ivri anokhi (I Am a Hebrew) as...
One of the most radical dynasties in nineteenth-century Hasidism. Although the Izhbits-Radzin (Pol., Iżbica-Radzyn) Hasidim never attracted a large following, their influence on contemporary Hasidic and non-Hasidic Judaism has been profound. The dynasty was founded by Mordekhai Yosef Leiner (1800–18...
Based in Warsaw and published between 1866 and 1915, Izraelita was the longest-lasting Polish Jewish journal. Published in the Polish language by Jewish reformers, the weekly initially described itself as a journal “for the study of Judaism”; later it broadened its self-definition to include “religi...