Thursday 26 June 2014

MOYSHE ALEKS

MOYSHE ALEKS (b. May 11, 1860)

Born in Shklov (Škłoŭ) in Mahilyow (Mogilev) district, Byelorussia.  His father died when he was scarcely nine months old, and he was raised in an orphanage.  He studied in a yeshiva in Bobryusk.  He worked as a bookbinder and as a tailor, and he labored in other trades as well.  In Odessa he made the acquaintance of Yiddish writers.  In 1900 he came to the United States.  He lived in New York, later settling in Washington, D.C.  On his seventieth, eightieth, and eighty-second birthdays, his Washington friends published three books, which, despite being quite primitive, had a distinctive historical value: Mayn lebns-geshikhte (My life history) (Washington, 1930); Lider fun mayn lebn (Poems from my life), which includes a kind of collection dubbed by the author “der pinkes fun vashingtoner yidishn lebn” (records of Jewish life in Washington) (Washington, 1940), 123 pp.; and Fertsik yor in vashington, oder ver iz ver (Forty years in Washington, or who is who?) (Washington, 1942), 126 pp.

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