YANKEV TSHEKHANOVSKI (JACOB CHENOWSKY)

YANKEV TSHEKHANOVSKI (JACOB CHENOWSKY) (b. 1881)

            He was born in Russia.  He studied in religious primary school, later becoming a laborer.  He was active in the revolutionary movement and was arrested by the Tsarist authorities in 1905.  In 1907 he moved to the United States and was employed in various trades.  In 1918, after the revolution in Russia, he returned home, but in 1923 he returned again, disappointed and embittered, and became a wanderer and led a group of Jewish hobos in New York.  He was known in Jewish quarters as a speaker at meetings, mainly against Communism.  He published poetry in Forverts (Forward) and Fraye arbeter-shtime (Free voice of labor), among other serials, in New York.  He also published the books: Idishe glaykhvertlekh (Yiddish aphorisms) (New York, 1924), 48 pp.; Sovyetn-land (Soviet terrain), a pamphlet opposing Communism and several poems (New York, 1925), 60 pp.; Mayne lider zaynen nit tsum zingen (My poems are not to be sung) (New York, 1928), 32 pp., second edition (1933); In der fremd (Abroad) (New York, 1936), 12 pp., with drawing by Shoyel Raskin and a dedication to his English translator, S. Levenzon.  Almost all of his booklets were published by “Fraynd un farerer”; this was a group of Jewish hobos who also sold his booklets throughout New York and other cities.  In 1938 he left with his group on foot across the United States and from that point there has been no further information about him.

Source: Information from Shoyel Raskin in New York

Khayim Leyb Fuks