FRIEDLAND, ABRAHAM HYMAN

FRIEDLAND, ABRAHAM HYMAN (Ḥayyim Abraham ; 1891–1939), poet, short-story writer, and educator. Friedland, who was born in Hordok, near Vilna, immigrated to America at the age of 15. In 1911 he founded the National Hebrew School in New York. In 1921 he assumed the post of superintendent of the Cleveland Hebrew Schools, and in 1924 was also appointed the first director of the Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education. He was a leading member of the Jewish community in Cleveland and a champion of the community Jewish school which featured an intensive Hebraic curriculum and included a strong emphasis on the Zionist ideal. He wrote poems, short stories, and articles, edited educational texts, and published essays in Hebrew, English, and Yiddish on Hebrew literature. His poems and stories were collected in two volumes at the end of his life, Sonettot ("Sonnets," 1939), and Sippurim ("Stories," 1939), and in a posthumous volume of poems, Shirim ("Poems," 1940). His Sippurim Yafim, stories designed for children, were reissued in three volumes by the Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education (1962). His narrative sonnets deal with the pathetic side of life, and his stories mainly portray American Jewish types.

bibliography:

A. Epstein, Soferim Ivrim be-Amerikah, 2 (1952), 311–23; Waxman, Literature, 4 (1960), 1251–55; A. Ben-Or, Toledot ha-Sifrut ha-Ivrit be-Dorenu, 1 (1954), 139–41; Sefer Zikhronot le-Ḥ.A. Friedland (1940).

[Eisig Silberschlag]