Schwartz, Abraham Samuel
SCHWARTZ, ABRAHAM SAMUEL
SCHWARTZ, ABRAHAM SAMUEL (1876–1957), Hebrew poet. Born in Lithuania, he immigrated to the United States in 1900. He became a physician in New York City in 1906. Schwartz's poetry, written over a period of 50 years and collected in a posthumous volume in 1959, is conservative in form and predominantly lyrical and ethical in coloration. His long poem "Job" is an interesting and even daring conception: Job returns, after all his afflictions, to his original affluence, but he misses the great privilege of contending with God about the order of the world. Other biblical and post-biblical themes on which he wrote poems include Ruth, Jeremiah, R. Johanan b. Zakkai, and Rashi.
bibliography:
M. Ribalow, Ketavim u-Megillot (1942), 180–3; A. Epstein, Soferim Ivrim ba-Amerikah (1952), 17–30; A.S. Schwartz, Shirim (1959), 7–18, 321–63 (evaluations by Zalman Shazar and S. Halkin), 19–32 (autobiographical sketch); Waxman, Literature, 4 (1960), 1071–72.
[Eisig Silberschlag]