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2,144 records
Breitbart, Zishe
(1883–1925), popular entertainer, circus strongman, and folk hero. Billed as “the strongest man in the world” in the 1920s, Zishe (Siegmund) Breitbart was better known to his Yiddish-speaking audiences as Shimshn-hagibr …
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Brenner, Yosef Ḥayim
(1881–1921), Hebrew writer. Yosef Ḥayim Brenner was born in Novy Mlini, a shtetl in the district of Chernigov, Ukraine, and murdered near Tel Aviv on 2 May 1921. From 1894 to 1897 Brenner studied at the Pochep yeshiva. B…
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Breslau
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Brest
(also Brest Litovsk; Pol., Brześć nad Bugiem; Yid., Brisk or Brisk de-Lita [Brisk of Lithuania]), city now in Belarus. Located at the confluence of the Bug and Mukhavets Rivers, Brest was a district capital and a large c…
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Brik, Liliia Iur’evna and Osip Maksimovich
Important Soviet cultural figures. Liliia (1891–1978) was active in poetic and artistic circles, while Osip (1888–1945) was a literary theorist and playwright.
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Brivnshtelers
A brivnshteler (letter-writing manual; Heb., igron) is a collection of formulas for composing letters on topics ranging from business to courtship to family life. In addition to providing templates for composition, the c…
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Brno
(Ger., Brünn), capital of Moravia, in today’s Czech Republic. The earliest evidence of Jewish settlement in Brno is a 1254 charter granted by Přemysl Ottakar II, Margrave of Moravia. This charter was renewed in 1268 and …
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Brociner Family
Intellectual family, active in Romanian law, the arts, and the military during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The four Brociner brothers were born in Iaşi into a well-to-do maskilic family of Galician origin; th…
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Brod, Max
(1884–1968), writer and critic. Born into an assimilated German-speaking family in multiethnic, late-Habsburg Prague, Max Brod went through an ideological transformation in his youth from German liberal and Jewish assimi…
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Broda Family
Rabbinic family, originating in Bohemia, that settled in Galicia, Lithuania, and Hungary. The surname Broda (Braude, Broide, Braudo) indicates that the family’s origins were likely in the city of Brod, though the name co…
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Broda, Avraham ben Sha’ul
(ca. 1650–1717), rabbi and Talmudist. Born in Prague, Avraham ben Sha’ul Broda studied in Poland with Yitsḥak ben Ze’ev Ḥarif, later chief rabbi of Kraków. Returning to Bohemia, Broda lived in Bunzlau (Mladá Boleslav). H…
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Broder, Berl
(ca. 1817–1868), early composer and performer of Yiddish popular songs. Born in Podkamen, three miles from Brody in Austrian Galicia, Berl Broder (also Broder-Margulies) began his public career as a folksinger in 1857, w…
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Broderzon, Moyshe
(1890–1956), Yiddish poet and playwright. The son of a well-to-do businessman, Moscow-born Moyshe Broderzon and his family were among the Jews expelled from that city in 1891. His father moved to Łódź but Broderzon’s mot…
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Brodskii Family
Prominent Jewish family in the Russian Empire. The Brodskiis originated in Brody, Galicia, with the family name Schor; the name Brodskii was taken by Me’ir (Mark) Schor when he moved to the small town of Zlatopol’ in Kie…
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Brodskii, Isaak Izrailevich
(1883 [1884 according to the Gregorian calendar]–1939), painter, graphic artist, art critic, and educator. Born in Sofievka (Taurida guberniia), Isaak Brodskii studied at the Odessa School of Art from 1896 to 1902. He th…
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Brodsky, Joseph
(1940–1996), Russian-born poet and Nobel Prize Laureate in literature in 1987. Joseph Brodsky (as he is known in the West; in Russian, Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodskii) was born in Leningrad. He was the only child of Aleksa…
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Brodt, Shemu’el
(1885–1963), rabbi and Zionist leader. Born in Łódź, Shemu’el Yom Tov ha-Levi Brodt studied at a Hasidic yeshiva, and was elected in 1907 to be the rabbi of Brisk Dekuyave (Pol., Brześć Kujawski). Prior to World War I, B…
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Brody
A town in present-day Ukraine, about 80 kilometers northeast of L’viv (Pol., Lwów). Brody (Yid., Brod) was founded at the ford over the Styr River (bród is Polish for ford) in 1586 by Stefan Żółkiewski. Jewish settlement…
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Brokhes, Rokhl
(1880–1942), Yiddish prose writer. Rokhl Brokhes was born in Minsk. With the encouragement of her father, Volf Brokhes, a maskil, she learned Hebrew and could read modern literature in that language. Her father died when…
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Bronshteyn, Yashe
(1897–1937), Yiddish literary critic. Born in Belsk, Belorussia, Yashe Bronshteyn lived in Warsaw from 1914 to 1918 and went to Russia in 1919 to fight as a Red Army soldier. In 1921 he lived in Orel and worked for the l…
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