Jacob Glatstein (1896-1971)

A Modern Yiddish Poet

Jacob Glatstein was born in Lublin, Poland in 1896 where he learned religious and secular subjects. His father, an artistic man, exposed him to great Yiddish writers and musicians and by the time he was thirteen, the young Glatstein was writing Yiddish poetry. Before World War I, his parents sent him to New York City to escape Poland's antisemitism. In 1918, Glatstein enrolled in New York University Law School and met Nokhem Borekh Minkov. Together, they became leaders of a modern Yiddish poetry movement, In-zikhistn, "inside the self." They believed that poetry should be written and recognized for its beauty and self-expression, not for political or social statements. Glatstein's first published poem was in 1919 in Poezye, a Yiddish poetry journal. That year, he married, started a career in journalism, and pursued his creative writing as a hobby. His poems dealt primarily with his memories of life in Poland with his family. During the Holocaust, Glatstein strayed from the In-zikhistn movement and began writing about Jewish social problems. In the 1950s, he was the editor of the World Jewish Congress Monthly. He continued to write poetry until his death in 1971.