Teif, Moshe

views updated

TEIF, MOSHE

TEIF, MOSHE (1904–1966), Soviet Yiddish poet. Born in Minsk, he contributed to Soviet Yiddish journals from 1924. His most prolific period was in the years immediately preceding the first purge of the Minsk writers (1937), when he published poems and short stories for children, his collection of lyrics Lider un Poemes ("Songs and Poems," 1933) for adults, and translations of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell (1935) and Scott's Ivanhoe (1937). His Milkhome-Lider ("War Poems," 1947) mirrored his experiences at the front in World War ii. He was imprisoned from 1937 to 1941 and from 1948 to 1953 but survived. After the death of Stalin, his poems appeared in Russian translation, in 1958, and again in Yiddish in 1965. He participated in *Sovetish Heymland from its inauguration in 1961. His translation of the Song of Songs and his autobiography appeared posthumously in 1967.

bibliography:

lnyl, 4 (1961), 79ff.; Sovetish Heymland (Dec. 1967), 128–36. add. bibliography: Korni (Moscow and Kiev), no. 22 (2004), 5–128.

[Sol Liptzin]