Justman, Moshe Bunem
JUSTMAN, MOSHE BUNEM
JUSTMAN, MOSHE BUNEM (pseudonym: B. Yeushzon ; 1889–1942), Yiddish journalist, humorist, and novelist. Born in Warsaw, he was educated in yeshivah and torn between admiration for ḥasidic life and the lure of modernism. He published in a broad spectrum of Yiddish periodicals, but from 1910 to 1925, his articles in the Warsaw Yiddish daily Moment under the pseudonym Itshele won him a large following among troubled ḥasidic youth. In 1925 he transfered his journalistic activities to the rival Warsaw daily, Haynt. His best novel Inem Rebms Hoyf ("At the Rabbi's Court," 1914) depicted the joyous fervor prevailing in Polish ḥasidic courts but also the infiltration of maskilic ideas even among the children of ḥasidic rabbis. While nostalgic for the old order, he recognized the inevitability of its decline. His other tales include Oyf der Frisher Luft ("Fresh Air," 1912) and Apikorsim ("Heretics," 1913). His articles on Jewish folklore, written over a number of years, were collected in eight volumes, Fun Unzer Alten Oytser ("From Our Old Treasure," 1932) and constitute his major work. Together with Menahem *Kipnis, he wrote a parody on S. *An-ski's The Dybbuk, which was performed on the Warsaw stage in 1921. He escaped Warsaw at the last moment and then also Vilna, settling in Ereẓ Israel in 1940. A posthumous collection of his feuilletons was published in 1988 (Nekhtn: A Bukh Felyetonen).
bibliography:
lnyl, 4 (1961), 179–81; Zeitlin, In a Literarisher Shtub (1937), 161–4; M. Ravitch, Mayn Leksikon, 1 (1945), 113–5. add. bibliography: Y. Szeintuch, in: Ḥulyot, 7 (2002), 309–20.
[Shlomo Bickel /
Jerold C. Frakes (2nd ed.)]