Israel Isidor Elyashev

Who was Israel Isidor Elyashev?

Dr. Israel Isidor Elyashev was a Jewish neurologist and the first Yiddish literary critic. He introduced the world to the works of the great contemporary Yiddish classical writers: Sholem Rabinovich, better known as Sholem Aleichem, Mendele Mocher Sefarim, Isaac Leib Peretz and Nachum Sokolov; along with modern Hebrew writers including Chaim Nachman Bialik, and Sholem Asch, among several others.

Elyashev was originally from Kaunas, Lithuania. In his youth, he studied with Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv at the Talmud Torah in Grobiņa, Latvia, but was eventually expelled from the school for his "heretical tendencies." He went on to attend a high school in Switzerland, and he then studied medicine and biology in Heidelberg and Berlin.

Elyashev's pen name was Bal-Makhshoves, meaning "Master [of] Thoughts" or "The Thinker".

Elyashev is best known for his work as a literary critic, writing in Yiddish. He translated Theodor Herzl's Altneuland from German into Yiddish, upon Herzl's personal request. His Yiddish translation of Herzl's work is the language that by far- most of European Jewry had read of Herzl's calling for a Modern Jewish State.

His attitude to Jewish literature, Yiddish, and Hebrew is summed up by something that he wrote in 1918: