Isaac Dov Berkowitz


Isaac Dov Berkowitz, was an Israeli author and Yiddish-Hebrew translator.

Biography

Isaac Dov Berkowitz was born in Slutsk, Russian Empire. He immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1928.
Berkowitz's first short story, On the eve of Yom Kippur, was published in the Warsaw Hebrew newspaper HaTzofe in 1903. In 1905, Berkowitz moved to Vilna, where he worked as an editor for the Hebrew newspaper HaZman. It was there that he met and later married Sholom Aleichem's daughter in 1906.
In 1910, Berkowitz published his first Collected stories and soon thereafter he began to translate Sholom Aleichem's writings from Yiddish into Hebrew. Two years later, he translated Leo Tolstoy's Childhood from Russian into Hebrew. Berkowitz emigrated to the United States in 1913, on the eve of the First World War. From 1916 to 1919 he edited HaToren, a Zionist-oriented periodical of high literary quality, and in 1919 he edited the short-lived journal Miklat.
After arriving in Palestinian Mandate in 1928, he co-edited the weekly newspaper Moznayim with Fishel Lachower, while also adapting to the stage several of Sholom Aleichem's plays for Habima Theater.

Awards