Baal-Makhshoves (Bal-Mashkhoves, Baal Mashkovets, Baal-Makhshavot; real surname and name: Elyashev Israel Isidor) (1873, Kovno — 1924, Kaunas) — literary critic, literary scholar, translator. Wrote in Yiddish, Russian and German; published in the Jewish weekly “Der Yud” and other periodicals. Studied at a yeshiva of the “Musar” movement in Courland Governorate. He graduated from a technical school in Switzerland and studied medicine at the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin (Germany). In 1905, he passed the state examination for the right to medical practice in Russia, and worked as a physician in Riga, Vilna and Warsaw. During World War I, he was mobilised as a physician in the Russian Army. After demobilisation in 1917, he engaged in medical practice in Petrograd. In 1921, he moved to Kaunas. One of the first supporters of Theodor Herzl, he translated his book “Altneuland” into Yiddish. He participated in the 5th and 12th Zionist Congresses. One of the first Jewish professional literary critics, he contributed to the establishment of critical literature in Yiddish as an independent literary genre. In his literary-critical studies he assessed the work of well-known writers of his time and wrote a series of articles on Russian writers: A.P. Chekhov, L.N. Tolstoy, V.G. Korolenko, L.N. Andreyev and others. He left a large literary legacy. B. believed that both Hebrew and Yiddish should be recognised as Jewish national languages: the former connects the Jewish people with their historical past, while the latter unites Jews living in the diaspora.

Works: Collected works in 5 vols. Vilna, 1910; Southern Jewry and Jewish Literature in the 19th Century. Berlin, 1922; Under the Wheel: A Collection of Published Works. Berlin, 1927.

KEE [Short Jewish Encyclopedia], vol. 1, col. 271

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