Yonah Rozenfeld (1880-July 9, 1944) was a Yiddish writer, known for his psychological stories.
Rozenfeld was born in 1880, in Staryi Chortoryisk, Ukraine.[1] Rozenfeld was educated at a yeshiva but he left at the age of thirteen following the death of his parents from cholera.[2] With the support of I.L. Peretz, he published his first story in 1904 in the St. Petersburg Yiddish daily Der fraynd.[3] His early stories were autobiographical accounts of working class Jews, and lacked the psychological focus of his later work.[4] After living in Kovel and Kyiv, he emigrated to the United States in 1921.[5]
Rozenfeld was a frequent contributor of stories to Forverts until the 1930s when he left the paper following an argument with Abraham Cahan.[6] Earlier, in 1922, Cahan had praised Rozenfeld as one of Yiddish literature's "greatest artists", along with Sholem Asch.[7] While he remained employed and paid by Cahan's paper, the editor refused to publish many of his manuscripts, leading to tension between the two men.[8] According to Irving Howe, this fight became the subject of gossip among Yiddish intellectuals.[9]
Rozenfeld's prose has been described as "deftly searching", with a "lucid and lyrical flow".[10] In 1923, Lewis Browne described him as the Yiddish writer who "leads a group of psychological fiction writers".[11] In addition to his stories, Rozenfeld was the author of the autobiographical novel Eyner aleyn, the story of an apprentice in Russia and his relationship with his boss' family.[12]
Rozenfeld's papers are held at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and include an unpublished 101-page autobiography.