Yehoash

Who was Yehoash?

Yehoash was the pen name for Solomon Blumgarten, also known as Solomon Bloomgarden, a Yiddish-language poet, scholar and Bible translator.

Yehoash "is generally recognized by those familiar with this literature [Yiddish], as its greatest living poet and one of its most skillful raconteurs", according to a New York Times book review in 1923.

His output included verse, translations, poetry, short stories, essays and fables in Yiddish and some articles in English. His poetry was translated into Russian, Dutch, Polish, Finnish, German, Spanish, English and Hebrew. He was responsible for translating many works of world literature into Yiddish, including Longfellow's Hiawatha and a very popular translation of the Bible. His version was hailed as a contribution of national significance and perhaps the greatest masterpiece in the Yiddish language. His two volume edition became a standard work for Yiddish speaking homes throughout the world.

Born in Virbalis, Lithuania, he emigrated to the United States in 1890 and settled in New York. For a decade he was a businessman, but wrote full-time starting in 1900 when he entered a sanitarium for tuberculosis.