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Avrom Ber Gotlober
Avrom Ber Gotlober
Poet, Author, Translator and Teacher, 1811-1899
Gotlober was born in Starokostyantyniv, where his father Chaim was a cantor. He became a leading figure of the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, an ideological and social movement in Eastern Europe. He developed into a leading maskil, as its adherents were known, and a prolific author and poet writing in Hebrew and Yiddish.
Following his ordination as a rabbi he taught in various government schools including in Starokostyantyniv for eleven years beginning in 1855. He then taught Talmud at the Zhytomyr Rabbinical Seminary until 1873. Among Gotlober's students there were Mendele Mocher Sforim, Sholom Aleichem and Abraham Goldfaden, who reported that Gotlober significantly influenced his development as a playwright. In his later years Gotlober became an itinerant teacher and tutor, staying for short periods of time in Odessa, Kishinev, Kremenets, Dubno, Mezhirichi, Warsaw, and Berdichev, where he died in poverty.
Sources and for more information, see:
Museum of Family History Avraham Ber Gottlober
The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe Gottlober, Avraham Ber
Jewish Encyclopedia Gottlober, Abraham Ber
Congress for Jewish Culture Gotlober, Avrom-Ber (Avraham Ber Gottlober)
Retrieved from JewishGen 12.20.2024 Avrom Ber Gotlober and his family on the 1834 Revision List from Starokostyantyniv showing his father Khaim as Head of Household, his mother Shifra, his son Usher and his siblings.
Avrom Goldfadn
Avrom Goldfadn
Playwright, Poet, Theater Director, 1840-1908
Born in Starokostyantyniv, Goldfadn is widely regarded as the founding father of modern Yiddish theater. He showed great interest and proficiency in Yiddish and Hebrew languages from childhood, impressing Avrom Ber Gotlober, his teacher in a Jewish crown school (government secondary-level school). He later studied in the rabbinic school in Zhytomyr, where Gotlober was again his teacher.
His plays and operas continue to be praised and performed today. Songs and music that he wrote, such as Royinkes mit Mandln (Raisins with Almonds) from the operetta Shulamith, are so identified with Yiddish culture that they may be mistaken for folk songs. In 1882, Goldfadn's Koldunya, sometimes known as Die Bube Yachne (The Witch) became the first Yiddish play performed in the United States.
Shortly after immigrating to New York City in 1904, he wrote David b'Milkhamah (David in the War) which became the first Hebrew language play ever performed in the United States. On his death in 1908, The New York Times described Goldfadn as the “Yiddish Shakespeare.”
Sources and for more information, see:
Brown University Library Yiddish Sheet Music Shulamith: Daughter of Jerusalem featuring Goldfadn's portrait and the title script for the play Tsvey Kuni Lemel
The Jewish Music Research Centre, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Goldfadn's Legacy: The Origins of Yiddish Theater
Yiddish Book Center Weekly Reader: Avrom Goldfadn, the "Father of Yiddish Theater"
Center for Jewish History Papers of Abraham Goldfaden (1840-1908)
Museum of Family History Abraham Goldfadn (Goldenfodim)
The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe Goldfadn, Avrom
The New York Times TimesMachine Noted Jewish Bard Dead
Friday Evening (1933) depicts his childhood Sabbath family dinner.
Courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum
and Sculpture Garden
Washington DC
Ben-Zion
Ben-Zion
Painter, Sculptor, Poet and Author, 1897-1987
Ben-Zion was born in Starokostyantyniv where his father Zvi Hirsch Weinman was a cantor. When he was denied admission to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna due to a quota substantially limiting Jewish students, he began to concentrate on writing short stories, drama and poetry, making significant contributions to the rebirth of the Hebrew language.
He emigrated to New York City in 1920 where he worked initially as a Hebrew teacher and was actively involved in vibrant communities of artists and Hebrew and Yiddish authors, becoming a founding member of an influential expressionist artists’ group. He stopped using the surname Weinman, and from the 1930s to the 1960s, taught art at the college level through the federal Works Progress Administration.
His works were primarily focused on Biblical themes and scenes of Jewish life in Europe, and were exhibited in major venues including the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC, and The Jewish Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Ben-Zion's birth record retrieved from JewishGen.org 12.20.2024 with the names of his father, his mother and her maiden surname, and his paternal and maternal grandfathers.
Sources and for more information:
Wikipedia Ben-Zion
Art Collection of the Ghetto Fighter's House, Israel Ben-Zion, In Dire Straits
Encyclopedia.com Ben-Zion
Hirschorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Friday Evening
ממקומך של אבי המנוח המפורסם ר׳ שלמה זצ״ל
A Mimkomkha by my late father, the famous Reb Shlomo of blessed memory, preserved by Cantor Hirsch Weintraub
Eduard Birnbaum Collection. Ms. Mus. 75, item no. 12, p. 19
Courtesy of the Klau Library, Cincinnati, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
Salomon Weintraub "Kashtan"
Salomon Weintraub "Kashtan"
Cantor and Composer, 1781-1829
Shlomo (Salomon) the son of Samson was born in Starokostyantyniv. Following his mother’s death when he was about nine years old, he was a musical apprentice to a cantor who gave Salomon the nickname Kashtan (“chestnut”) under which he became famous. Kashtan’s first cantorial positions were in Zamość, Tykocin, and Brest. He was then hired by Dubno and remained associated with the city for the rest of his life. He was required to be there only on the High Holy Days and spent many months each year traveling around eastern Europe on tour, singing in synagogues or making private appearances.
In the days before the phonograph and when printed synagogue music was still rare, Kashtan became famous through his tours. He had an extraordinary vocal range and because of the exceptional musical and emotional power of his singing, he attained a degree of fame and stardom comparable to that of Yossele Rosenblatt a century later.
At some point between 1819 and 1829 Salomon acquired the family name Weintraub. Currently, the earliest known documentation of “Weintraub” is in Salomon’s entry in the Jewish death registry of the city of Brody, where he died in 1829. (Note that his death record from the Central State Historical Archives in Lviv can be retrieved from Gesher Galicia.)
Salomon’s brother Nochum Leib and son Hirsch (ca. 1812-1881) were also cantors. Hirsch, one of the most famous cantors of the nineteenth century, wrote a biography of Salomon and preserved some of his music.
Source and for more information:
Great appreciation to Rabbi Daniel S. Katz, historian and musicologist of Jewish music who has conducted extensive research about Kashtan and who very generously contributed the biography of Kashtan and the image of his music for this KehilaLinks.
"The Death of Kashtan, or When Did Cantor Hirsch and his Father Salomon (Kashtan) Become Weintraubs?,” Journal of Synagogue Music, vol. 49, no. 1 (Oct. 2024), pp. 65-81
“The Cantor Next Door: Cantor Salomon (Known as Kashtan), His Son Hirsch Weintraub, and the Motif of Hiding in the Next Room.” Journal of Synagogue Music, vol. 48, no. 1 (Sept. 2023), pp. 54-60
Academia.edu Jewish Historical and Musicological Publications by Daniel S. Katz
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jewish Music Research Center, Daniel S. Katz Shlomoh ben Shimshon
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