Aaron Zeitlin


Aaron Zeitlin, the son of the famous Jewish writer Hillel Zeitlin and Esther Kunin, authored several books on Yiddish literature, poetry and parapsychology.

Biography

Zeitlin spent his formative years in Gomel and Vilna. In 1920, he and his brother Elchanan traveled to Palestine, and in 1921 they returned to Warsaw.
His literary abilities were apparent already in his youth when he contributed some articles to the Odessa-based children's journal Perachim and Hashachar.
His first publication was a fictional piece that appeared in the journal Di yidishe velt, in 1914. His first published books of Yiddish poetry were Matatron and Shotns oyfn shney.
In the 1920s to 1930s, he published short stories, as well as many philosophical and journalistic essays, and pieces of literary and cultural criticism.
In 1939, Zeitlin accepted an invitation from Maurice Schwartz, the director of the Yiddish Art Theatre, to come to New York to work on the company's production of his play Esterke; prevented from returning home by the beginning of the Second World War, Zeitlin settled in New York permanently.
His play Chelmer Chachomim had already opened to critical acclaim at the Yiddish Theatre in New York prior to his arrival, and he slowly became a fixture of the Yiddish scene.
For a time, he was also Professor of Hebrew literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, in New York.
He was close with other Yiddish literary giants of his day, including Isaac Bashevis Singer who wrote of the former "his greatest vice was literature, religious literature and anything and everything of intellectual value, he was a man possessing vast knowledge, a veritable spiritual giant".
He wrote the famous Yiddish song Donna Donna, whose music was composed by Sholom Secunda.
In 1969 Zeitlin and Abraham Sutzkever were the first recipients of the Itzik Manger Prize for Yiddish letters.

Published works

Ha-meziut ha-aheret, Tel Aviv: Yavneh, 1967.
Parapsychologia murchevet, Tel Aviv: Yavneh, 1973.
Poems of the Holocaust and Poems of Faith , 1-217, 2007