Meir Blinken

Meir Blinken (also spelled Meir Blinkin or Meyer Blinken; 1879 – 1915) was a Ukrainian-American author who published about 50 fiction and nonfiction works in Yiddish between 1904 and 1915.

Meir Blinken
Born1879
Pereiaslav, Russian Empire
Died1915 (aged 35–36)
RelativesAlan Blinken (grandson)
Donald M. Blinken (grandson)
Antony Blinken (great-grandson)

Early life

Blinken was born in 1879 in Pereiaslav (Ukrainian: Перея́слав, translit. Pereyáslav).[1] There he studied at a religious Jewish primary school, followed by a business education in Kyiv.[1]

Career

After starting a family,[1] Blinken moved to the United States at age 25 in 1904.[2] Over the next 10 years, while making a living in jobs that included carpentry and owning a massage business,[1] Blinken published about 50 fiction and nonfiction works.[2] In 1908, Blinken published the book Weiber, which is one of the earliest Yiddish books to explicitly engage with women's sexuality, and perhaps the first book by a Yiddish writer in America to engage with sexuality at all.[1] Richard Elman commented on these themes in a review of Blinken's work in the 1980s, writing in The New York Times that in the community of Yiddish authors who wrote for the largely female literary audience of Yiddish fiction, Blinken "was one of the few who chose to show with empathy the woman's point of view in the act of love or sin".[3] The scholar of Yiddish literature Ruth Wisse wrote that Blinken was highly popular among his own generation of Yiddish-speaking Americans but that his reputation quickly diminished in the years after his death.[2] Emanuel S. Goldsmith characterized Blinken as part of a generation of Yiddish writers in America who developed a new form of Yiddish literature, and both Goldsmith and Elman emphasized that the major legacy of Blinken's work was that it vividly evoked the atmosphere and characters of the very early Jewish diaspora in New York.[4]

Personal life

Blinken died in 1915, at the age of 37.[5] Two of Blinken's grandsons, Alan Blinken and Donald Blinken, served as U.S. ambassador to Belgium and Hungary, respectively. Meir Blinken is the great-grandfather of U.S. President Joseph Biden's appointed U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken.[6]

Some of Blinken's collected works were published by the State University of New York Press in 1984,[7] and have been included in other compendiums of Yiddish literature in the century after his death.[8]

References
  1. Shimon Briman (30 November 2020). "Yiddish and the Ukrainian–Jewish roots of the new U.S. Secretary of State". Translated by Marta D. Olynyk. Ukrainian Jewish Encounter. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
  2. Romano, Carlin (January 2021). "The Yiddish Yiches of a New Top Diplomat". Moment Magazine. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
  3. Elman, Richard (18 March 1984). "Reviews In Short". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
  4. Goldsmith, Emanuel S. (23 March 1984). "Jewish Books in Review" (PDF). The Rhode Island Herald. Rhode Island Jewish Historical Society. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
  5. Peretz, Martin (30 November 2020). "Memories and Expectations of Antony Blinken". The algemeiner. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
  6. Voice of America—Russian Service (2020-12-03). "Настоящее время: Америка". GolosAmeriki.com. Voice of America. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  7. "Stories by Meir Blinkin". State University of New York Press. Retrieved 6 January 2021.
  8. "Four Unique Books Published by the Sholem Aleichem Club". Sholem Aleichem Club. Retrieved 6 January 2021.


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