Among the Radomskers who became famous in the Jewish diaspora was the author and publicist Hirsh-Dovid Nomberg. H. D. Nomberg was prominent among the second generation of new literature. A lyrical author with a penetrating eye. A brilliant essayist and publicist and an eminent figure in Polish Jewry for 30 years at the beginning of the 20th century – he was a son of Jewish Radomsk. Flesh of its flesh and bone of its bones. Nomberg was born in 1876 in the small town Mszczonów and arrived in our town as a young boy. He was educated in Radomsk. It is where he spent his youth. Here he married and started a family and here is where tragedy hit his family in a way that marked his writing and the rest of his life. He was around 10 years old when he was brought to Radomsk by his mother who divorced his father and married the religious community leader (nagid) reb Itseleh Shternfeld. Jewish Radomsk was a diversified stronghold of various Polish Hassidic streams and ideologies. Alongside the lavish Radomski “Tiferet Shlomo” dynasty were dozens of small prayer and congregation synagogues (“shtibalach”) of various Hassidic courts. Reb Itsel, Hirsh-Dovid's stepfather was a Ger Hassid, the strongest and most prominent stream in Jewish Poland. As a devout Hassid he did everything he could for his talented stepson to follow in his footsteps. Nomberg's education followed the conventional path of the time. He studied in the Cheder then at Amstov Yeshiva and was considered a prodigy. Of the town's wealthiest people, it was Reb Mordechai Szapira, owner of an iron supply business, who was given the honor of matching his young daughter with the young prodigy for marriage. Reb Mordechai Szapira promised his son-in-law a room in his house and financial support for several years and a rabbinical seat in one of the towns upon completion of his studies. However, it soon became apparent that Nomberg was lazy and preferred books, chess and cards. After a while, reb Mordechai Szapira kicked him out of the house and open a general good store for the couple. But neither Nomberg who spent most days reading nor his wife who was hardly a capable woman could manage such a store. The store (located in reb Hirschel Benkir's house near the train station) was later passed on to Shlomo Yitzhak Rabinowitch who made a good living from it. The lively, astute, and talented Hirsh-Dovid, with his lyrical soul and penetrating eye probably began to ponder his surroundings and was not satisfied with dry and futile studies. He was popular and had many friends among the town intellectuals such as Mendel Fajnzilber, Shlomo Karkovski, and Avraham Rudis who encouraged him to correspond with authors in Warsaw. The authors urged him to move to Warsaw. On the group's visit to Warsaw, Nomberg and his Radomsk friends got stuck there over Rosh HaShana and spent the holiday with their new acquaintances in talk and debate. He so enjoyed the company of the people he met there and was so enchanted with the environment that he continued to postpone his return home. Among the Radomskers who became famous in the Jewish diaspora was the author and publicist Hirsh-Dovid Nomberg.

H. D. Nomberg was prominent among the second generation of new literature. A lyrical author with a penetrating eye. A brilliant essayist and publicist and an eminent figure in Polish Jewry for 30 years at the beginning of the 20^th century – he was a son of Jewish Radomsk. Flesh of its flesh and bone of its bones.

Nomberg was born in 1876 in the small town Mszczonów and arrived in our town as a young boy. He was educated in Radomsk. It is where he spent his youth. Here he married and started a family and here is where tragedy hit his family in a way that marked his writing and the rest of his life.

He was around 10 years old when he was brought to Radomsk by his mother who divorced his father and married the religious community leader (nagid) reb Itseleh Shternfeld. Jewish Radomsk was a diversified stronghold of various Polish Hassidic streams and ideologies. Alongside the lavish Radomski “Tiferet Shlomo” dynasty were dozens of small prayer and congregation synagogues (“shtibalach”) of various Hassidic courts. Reb Itsel, Hirsh-Dovid's stepfather was a Ger Hassid, the strongest and most prominent stream in Jewish Poland. As a devout Hassid he did everything he could for his talented stepson to follow in his footsteps.

Nomberg's education followed the conventional path of the time. He studied in the Cheder then at Amstov Yeshiva and was considered a prodigy. Of the town's wealthiest people, it was Reb Mordechai Szapira, owner of an iron supply business, who was given the honor of matching his young daughter with the young prodigy for marriage.

Reb Mordechai Szapira promised his son-in-law a room in his house and financial support for several years and a rabbinical seat in one of the towns upon completion of his studies. However, it soon became apparent that Nomberg was lazy and preferred books, chess and cards. After a while, reb Mordechai Szapira kicked him out of the house and open a general good store for the couple. But neither Nomberg who spent most days reading nor his wife who was hardly a capable woman could manage such a store. The store (located in reb Hirschel Benkir's house near the train station) was later passed on to Shlomo Yitzhak Rabinowitch who made a good living from it.

The lively, astute, and talented Hirsh-Dovid, with his lyrical soul and penetrating eye probably began to ponder his surroundings and was not satisfied with dry and futile studies. He was popular and had many friends among the town intellectuals such as Mendel Fajnzilber, Shlomo Karkovski, and Avraham Rudis who encouraged him to correspond with authors in Warsaw. The authors urged him to move to Warsaw.

On the group's visit to Warsaw, Nomberg and his Radomsk friends got stuck there over Rosh HaShana and spent the holiday with their new acquaintances in talk and debate. He so enjoyed the company of the people he met there and was so enchanted with the environment that he continued to postpone his return home.


[Page 273]


The holiday was over. His Radomsikian friends returned home but Hirsh-Dovid was nowhere to be seen. After some investigation his in-laws discovered the truth. Reb Mordechai rushed to Warsaw to remove Hirsh-Dovid from the impurity he stumbled into. To reb Mordechai's surprise, Hirsh-Dovid refused to return renouncing his faith not only from the Ger rabbi but from all rabbis. He did eventually return to Radomsk under pressure although he remained adamant in his rebellion. Reb Mordechai demanded he divorce his daughter.

According to a different version of this story given by one of the Radomsk elderly, the reason Nomberg left Radomsk was more prosaic: Nomberg had three children by the time he lost his shop and the dowry invested in it. He had no choice other than returning to live with his in-laws. When he returned late one night after playing cards his angry father-in-law threw him out of the house and Nomberg fled to Warsaw.

Nomberg and his wife loved each other and their three children, refusing to divorce. The battle continued for two months until Nomberg surrendered. With a broken heart he left his wife and his town. The love for his wife and memory of his town scared his soul forever.

Shmuel Niger, known for his literary critic of Nomberg's work wrote among other things that “sometimes we read his words in an odd emotion of sharing his grief, as if we are reading a sad intimate letter. His imagination is that of an isolated lonely man who resurrects the sweet intimate memories of his youth”. Like an untrained hand touching a stretched cord, Nomberg's words evoke long-dormant emotions of sadness. Miserable moments of silence.

The special tune of his writing, the tune of sad irony, the soft lyricism woven with threads of realistic observation, the sentimentality hidden behind the cynicism – make Nomberg one of the most brilliant authors of Polish Jewry, of an entire generation almost. A generation of critically ill people who barely recovered and made it back, through enormous pain, to actual life, to work, to passion for life, to acts of life.

Nomberg's heroes – those indecisive souls who “know how to think but lack the ability to want”, the sober realists who know everything except how to live a simple regular real life – are they not a mirror of all the Yeshiva students at their desks, removed from actual daily life? This second generation, subordinate to the patronage of their fathers and the demands of their rich in-laws that Nomberg's keen eyes saw around him in Radomsk, in the Beit-Midrash and in the Shtibel. Few authors in Jewish Poland were able to convey the psychological depths that Nomberg did. The soul of an entire generation, the generation of crisis in Polish Jewry, a soft-hearted generation full of deep doubt.

The influence of his home town is especially evident in Nomberg's stories about children: “Eyes”, “Elul”, “Between Father & Mother”, “Misunderstanding”. These are sad stories that echo the difficult days of his childhood and youth.

Nomberg's horrible tragedies – agreeing to divorce his beloved wife, the wife who loved him and did not want to divorce; the death of his young son; life in a foreign place – weakened his spirit and his body, hastening his death. He was only 51 years old.

His well-known books are: “We Awaken” (1905); “In a Hasidic House” (1906); “The Family” (1919/1921); “In a Polish Yeshiva” (1921); Collected Works (1922); “Stories” (1911/15 in Hebrew).

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