MENAKHEM
BOREYSHO (MENAHEM BORAISHO) (January 26, 1888-February 12, 1949)
His earlier name was Menakhem Goldberg, and he was known
until the 1920s by his literary name of “Menakhem,” at which point he assumed
the surname Boreysho (Boraisho), his mother’s maiden name.
He was born in Brisk (Brześć)
in Lithuania, son of a Hebrew teacher, Noyekh Goldberg, who himself wrote in
Hebrew and who encouraged his sons to do so (one of his sons, Avrom Goldberg, was
the later editor of the Warsaw newspaper, Haynt [Today]). Due to his sickliness in early childhood,
Menakhem was unable to attend religious elementary school, but studied with his
father. Later he attended the Russian
municipal school, and later still studied further as an external student. Early on he demonstrated an interest in
politics (at age sixteen he was a member of Poale-Tsiyon). He also began early to write poetry in
Russian and Yiddish. In 1905 he arrived
in Warsaw and showed Y. L. Perets his poems.
Perets befriended him and published several of his poems in Der veg
(The way). He chose for his maiden poem
to publish, Kodesh (Holy) of 1907.
In the course of his first two years in Warsaw, his poems were published
(all under the name “Menakhem”) in the anthologies: “Shvartse royzn” (Black
roses) in Naye tsayt (New times); “Tfiles” (Prayers) in Literarishe
monatshriftn (Literary monthly writings); “Shloyme” (Solomon) in Yidish
(Yiddish); and in other publications. In
1908 he became a regular contributor to Haynt and Dos yidishe
vokhnblat (The Jewish weekly), for which he wrote articles about theater as
well as feature pieces. Between 1909 and
1911, he served in the Russian army, and he published his impressions of
barracks life in Haynt and Fraynd (Friend). In 1914 during the anti-Jewish boycott
movement in Poland, he wrote his poem “Poyln” (Poland) (Warsaw, 21 pp.). It afforded him the opportunity to express
his bitter feelings against elitist, anti-Semitic Poland. At the outbreak of WWI, he left for
Switzerland, and from there he went to the United States. In New York, he contributed for a certain
period of time to Tog (Day), and later for the periodicals: Firer
(Leader), Haynt, Fraye arbeter shtime (Free voice of labor), Tsayt
(Time), and Literatur un lebn (Literature and life). In 1916, together with Moyshe Leyb Halpern,
he edited the anthology Ist brodvey (East Broadway). During his initial years in the United
States, he composed poetry and stories, as well as essays about theater (using
the pseudonym “M. Grim”) and current events articles. He also published his first poetry
collection, entitled A ring in der keyt (A ring in the chain) (New York,
1916), 124 pp. In 1915 he became
secretary for the just founded “People’s Relief.” Between 1917 and 1920, worked again for Tog
and for a period of time he lived in Chicago, before returning to New
York. In 1919 he published a critical
piece on the Russian writer, Aleksander kuprin (New York, 39 pp.), and
in 1920 his poem Zamd (Sand) (New York, 206 pp.), a long lyrical-epic
work which effectively announced a new turn in his literary works. In the same year of 1920, he was the head of
the Jewish press department in the “Joint Distribution Committee,” a post he
retained until 1929. In 1923 he
published, under the name “M. Boreysho,” Zavl rimer (Zavl Rimer)
(Warsaw, 224 pp.), a poetic chronicle in sixteen chapters, written in verse, with
deeply lyrical parts that were well adapted to the narrative-poetic frame of
the work. With this book began a new
phase in Boreysho’s creative writing, a period in which he freed himself bit by
bit from his earlier, often flowing sentimentalism.
In 1926 he undertook a trip to Poland and Soviet Russia. That very year, the publishing house of B.
Kletskin in Vilna brought out his work Der gilgl, dialog in tsvey bagegenishn
(The transformation, a dialogue in two encounters), 145 pp. When he returned from his trip, he published
a travel narrative in Frayhayt (Freedom) in New York, where he was a
regular contributor until 1929. Due to
the pro-Arab stance of the Communists [in the wake of the Arab riots against
Jews in 1929 in Palestine], he, together with an entire group of writers, left
this newspaper. He became a contributor
to Di vokh (The week)—first issue, October 1929; all in all,
thirty-three issues—and later to Yidish (Yiddish), a weekly put out by
the Yiddish Cultural Society (first issue, May 1932; published from 1932 to
1934). In 1932 Kletskin Publishers
brought out in Vilna his Der pastekh dovid, a shpil oyf a biblishn motiv in
zeks bilder (David, the shepherd, a play with a biblical motif in six
scenes), 149 pp. That same year, he
became a teacher in a Workmen’s Circle school in Boston. In 1933 he received a regular position with
the American Jewish Congress, a position he retained until 1947; he wrote editorials
for the organization’s Congress Weekly.
Between 1933 and 1943, he worked on his longest and more important work,
Der geyer, kapitlen fun a lebn (The peddler, chapters from a life), 2
vols. (New York, 1943), 512 pp. Distinct
parts of this work had been published earlier in Zamlbikher
(Anthologies) (1936-1938) and in Tsukunft (Future) (1940-1942). Der geyer was like a conclusion to a
long, arduous path, rich in a thoughtful search and poetic self-analysis—a path
that extended from “Tfiles” and “Poyln” through Zamd to the wanderings
of the peddler (Der geyer), Noyekh Markan. Concerning this work, critics wrote that it
isn’t a book, but a religious text. In
1940, the publishing house of CYCO (Central Yiddish
Cultural Organization, Tsentrale yidishe kultur-organizatsye) brought out his
report, Der kriziz in yidish (The crisis in Yiddish) (New York, 32 pp.);
in 1946, the American Jewish Congress published his pamphlet in English, The
Story of Yiddish (New York, 23 pp.); and in 1947, his work, A dor, opklayb
fun lider un poems, 1907-1933 (A generation, a selection of songs and
poems: 1907-1933) (New York, 307 pp.).
Included in the last of these was an autobiographical work, entitled
“Mit dem dor” (With the generation), which covered the poet’s taxing and
searching efforts to erase the “dividers between him and his generation” and to
devise what is “amenable for a poet.” In
1947 he again became a contributor to Tog which he continued to do until
his final days. In Tog he
published many fundamental articles concerning Jewish life in the United
States. At this time, he had already
strengthened his long-held position in Yiddish literature, that of the poet as
a thinker, a “peddler,” and a searcher, replete with responsibility. He was more than anything full of doubts, but
also a man of deep beliefs in a higher realm, in a higher spiritual realm.
On February 12, 1949 Menakhem
Boreysho died in New York at the age of sixty-one. In 1950 the publisher Matones in New York
brought out the last, though in part still unfinished, works by the poet in the
volume entitled Durkh doyres (Through generations), 277 pp., together
with a work by Leo Finkelshteyn, Menakhem boreyshos shafungs-veg
(Menakhem Boreysho’s creative path). The
volume included Boreysho’s poems, Moyshe (Moses) and Kheshbm afn ash
(An accounting for Asch). Also of great
interest were Menakhem boreyshos briv (The letters of Menakhem Boreysho)
which Shmuel Niger published in Tsukunft (New York) (March 1954). A collection of his essays was being prepared
for publication. [n.b. The last,
entitled Eseyen (Essays), came out in 1956, published in Buenos Aires.]
Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2 (1927), pp.
438-41; Shmuel Niger, in Algemeyner entsiklopedye (General
encyclopedia), vol. 5 (1944); L. Finkelshteyn, “Boreysho-biblyografye”
(Boreysho’s bibliography), in Durkh doyres, cited above; letters from
Boreysho to Y. Tverski, in Di goldene keyt 4 (Tel Aviv) (1949); letter(s)
to Y. Shatski, in Yivo-bleter 36 (1952), pp. 343-44; Ada Boreysho-Fogel,
“Ikh dermon zikh” (I recall), Tsukunft (New York) (January 1955); letter(s)
to G. Pomerants, in Tint un feder 3 (Toronto) (September 1949).
Yitskhok Kharlash
[Additional
information from: Berl Kagan, comp., Leksikon
fun yidish-shraybers (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers) (New
York, 1986), col. 59.]
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