YISROEL-MORTKHE GUDELMAN (ISRAEL M. GOODELMAN)

YISROEL-MORTKHE GUDELMAN (ISRAEL M. GOODELMAN) (b. April 13, 1886)

           He was the son of the writer Yoysef Gudelman [and brother of Hersh Gudelman], born in Mezhibizh, Podolia region.  He was raised in Otik (Ataki), Bessarabia.  He studied Jewish subject matter in religious elementary school and with private tutors, and Russian with his father; later, he studied in a state school in Mohilev and graduated from high school in Odessa.  He worked, 1902-1905, in a pharmacy in Russia.  From 1905 he was living in the United States.  There he received a degree as a pharmacist in 1910, and later, from 1937 to 1950, he taught in schools of the National Jewish Workers’ Alliance and of the Sholem-Aleykhem Folk Institute in New York.  He served as secretary of the last of these.  From 1950 he was the owner of a pharmacy in Brooklyn.  He began writing stories for children in 1935 for Kinder-zhurnal (Children’s journal) in New York, and from that point forward he published his own and translations of others’ stories in this magazine, as well as in: Di prese (The press) and Grininke beymelekh (Little green trees) in Buenos Aires, and in other serials.  He contributed as well to Pedagogisher zhurnal (Pedagogical journal) in New York.  He was the author of the volumes Yidishe geshikhte (Jewish history), for the first, second, and third years of school.  The publisher Matones in New York initially brought these out in 1945 in four editions, with the fourth in 1954: vol. 1, 46 pp.; vol. 2, 47 pp.; and vol. 3, 57 pp.