David Apotheker (
Yiddish: דוד אַפּאָטהעקער; 28 August 1855 – 23 October 1911) was a
Lithuanian-born
Yiddish and
Hebrew humorist, poet, journalist, and printer.
In 1877 Apotheker became involved in the
nihilist movement, and was arrested in
Kiev in 1879 for revolutionary activities.[3] He fled to
Czernowitz, then the capital of
Bukovina, where he opened a book store,[4] wrote for Hebrew and Yiddish papers, and published his first book, Ha-Nevel ('The Harp'), containing Hebrew and Yiddish poems (1881).[5]
He emigrated to the United States in 1888, where he unsuccessfully tried to found a
communist colony.[4] He thereafter founded a women's clothing store in
Brownsville, Brooklyn, joined the local anarchist movement, and became a prolific contributor to the Yiddish press. In 1895 he moved to Philadelphia, where he became a printer and edited Die Gegenwart, a short-lived Yiddish weekly.[6][7][8]
He died in Brooklyn, New York on October 23, 1911.
Family
Apotheker married his wife Celia (nee Schoolman) in 1896 in Philadelphia.[8][9] They had a number of children: Engel (born 1891), Lizzy (born 1892), Anna (born 1895), Susana (born 1897), William (born 1900), and Lillian (born 1904).[10][11][12][13][14]
Selected publications
Ha-nevel [The Lyre] (in Hebrew and Yiddish). Czernowitz: Elias Heilpern. 1881.
Humoristishe shriften [Humorous Writings] (in Yiddish). Vol. 1. New York: Hebrew Publishing Company. 1910.
Humoristishe shriften [Humorous Writings] (in Yiddish). Vol. 2. New York: Hebrew Publishing Company. 1912.
^"David Apotheker". Lives in the Yiddish Theatre: Short Biographies of Those Involved in the Yiddish Theatre as Described in Zalmen Zylbercweig's "Leksikon fun Yidishn teater". Retrieved 17 April 2021.
^Marcus, Jacob Rader; Daniels, Judith M., eds. (1994).
"Apotheker, David"(PDF). The Concise Dictionary of American Jewish Biography. Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing. p. 19.
^Boonin, Harry Davidow (1999). The Jewish Quarter of Philadelphia: A History and Guide, 1881–1930. Philadelphia: Jewish Walking Tours of Philadelphia.
ISBN978-0-9669884-0-6.