[Page 456]

Yaakov Zipper (1900 – ). The adopted name of Yaakov Shtern, born in Szczebrzeszyn, near Zamość, Poland. He lived in the town of Tyszowce, near Lublin, where his father, the author of several Hebrew books, was the shochet and rabbi. He studied in cheder, and then studied Talmud and Jewish law with his father. He studied Polish and German from private tutors. He left Tyszowce in 1919, and lived illegally in Wolhyn. At the time of the Bolshevik attack on Poland (in the summer of 1920), he was sentenced by the Poles to be shot, but he was saved thanks to a guarantee that the Jews from the town of Hrubieszów gave for him. He was an active member of Hechalutz, Young Zion, and the right–leaning Poalei Zion. He worked for the TSYSHO school network in Poland. He was a member of the culture committee of the professional unions in Ludmir, Wolhyn, and later a member of the “Jewish National Workers Farband” in America. Since 1925, he was a Yiddish–Hebrew teacher in Canada, and the principal of the Peretz Schools of Montreal. He was the principal of the Winnipeg Peretz School from 1930–1934, and then again a teacher in Montreal. He made his debut with a brief sketch To Shalosh Seudos in the Palestine Shtima, Brisk, 1923. He then published narratives, poems, articles, and spreads in the Hebrew Hakochav of Warsaw, Undzer Shtime of Chełm, Green Trees, Der Chaver of Vilna, the Brisker Wachenblatt, the Kanader Adler of Montreal, and Dos Yiddishe Vort of Winnipeg, Lid Becher of Los Angeles; Kultur, Shul–Pinkas, Oifbroiz of Chicago; Di Yiddishe Velt of Vancouver; Di Woch, Yiddishe Zukunft, Oifkum, Der Yiddish Kempfer, Kinder Journal, Kinder Zeitung, Veiter, Oifn Tevel, Bitzaron, and others of New York; Haolam, Jerusalem; Hatzofeh of Tel Aviv; Argentiner Beimlech of Buenos Aires; Proletaretariter Gedank of Toronto; Oifgang of Bucharest, and others. He published in book form Geven Iz A Moment, five stories from the life of the Baal Shem Tov, published by Chaverim, Montreal, 1940, 167 pages (published also in Hebrew in Tel Aviv), On the Other Side of the Bug, a novel, published in Montreal 1946, 283 pages (published also in Hebrew in Tel Aviv, 1956, 367 pages). He received a prize from Der Zukunft for his story Mageifa [Plague]. He edited the Kanader Wochenblatt, Montreal 1926–1927 under pseudonyms: Y. Shein, Alef, Yitzchak Sternberg, Y. Nitles, and others. He was a delegate to the second World Jewish Culture Congress in New York, 1959. He lives in Montreal, Canada.

Ch. M. Keiserson, Kanader Adler, Montreal 27^th edition, 1940; Sh. Giner, Tog, New York, May 1941; Y. Entin, Yiddisher Kempfer, New York, September 19, 1941; Dr. A Sukrani, from the Journal, New York, October 1941; Y. Y. Tinel, Kanader Adler, Montreal, February 11, 1945; M. Ravitch, ibid. October 21, 1945; Avraham Reisen, Di Feder, New York, 1949; L. Steinman, History of the Zionist Workers Movement in North America, New York, 1955; Sh. Belkin, The Poalei Zion Movement in Canada, Montreal, 1956, no. 320; Nima, Avigor, Massa, Tel Aviv, September 20, 1957; M. Ungerfeld, Hatzofeh, Tel Aviv, 22 Sivan 5617 (1957); Y. Midrash, Kanader Adler, Montreal, September 25, 1959; Y. Rabinovitch, ibid. November 2, 1959.

In the Encyclopedia of the History of Torah Greats, page 383, we read about an “unknown commentator” with the following survey. (It is also mention in the article on Szczebrzeszyn in the Ledgers of the Council of the Four Lands.

He was an author in the middle of the middle of the fourth century of the sixth millennium (at the end of the 1500s). He authored a commentary on the Targum Yonatan^[1] and the second Targum on the Book of Esther, first printed in Prague, 5369 (1609), and later several more times, and it even was included in Chumashim. We do not know anything on the events of his life.

Lexicon of the New Yiddish Literature, New York, 1960

Meir Ben Samuel of Szczebrzeszyn^[2]: Hebrew author of the seventeenth century. In the disastrous years of 1648–1649, he lived in Szczebrzeszyn, Russian Poland, an honored member of the community, whence he escaped on its invasion by the Cossacks, to Cracow; there he published his “Zok Haittim” (1650), an account in Hebrew verse of Jewish persecution during the Cossack uprising. This book was afterward published by Joshua B. David of Lemberg under his own name; Steinschneider was the first to discover this plagiarism. Meir wrote also “Mizmor Shir” a Sabbath hymn, in Aramaic and Judeo–German (Venice 1639).

Bibliography:

Gurland, Le–Korot ha–Gezerot, no. 3; Steinschneider, Cat. Bodl. No. G384; ??? A.S. W.

From the Jewish Encyclopedia

Translator's Footnotes

1. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targum_Jonathan Return
2. Spelling transcribed from the original. Return

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