Der Nister

Der Nister
Der Nister (front center) sitting behind Marc Chagall at the Malakhovka Jewish boys refuge.
Born	Pinchus Kahanovich 1 November 1884 (NS) Berdychiv, Ukraine, Russian Empire
Died	4 June 1950 Gulag, Soviet Union
Nationality	Russian

Der Nister (Yiddish: דער נסתּר ֹor דער ניסטער‎, "the hidden one"; 1 November 1884 – 4 June 1950 the Soviet Gulag) was the pseudonym of Pinchus Kahanovich (פּנחס קאַהאַנאָוויטש), a Yiddish author, philosopher, translator, and critic.

Kahanovich was born in Berdychiv, Ukraine the third in a family of four children with ties to the Korshev sect of Chassidism. His father was Menakhem Mendl Kahanovich, a smoked-fish merchant at Astrakhan on the Volga; his mother's namer was Leah. He received a traditional religious education, but was drawn through his reading to secular and Enlightenment ideas, as well as to Zionism. In 1904 he left Berdychiv hoping to evade the military draft, and this was probably the time when he started using the pseudonym. He moved to Zhytomyr, near Kiev, where he earned a modest living as a teacher of Hebrew at an orphanage for Jewish boys.

At that time he also wrote his first book, in Yiddish, Gedankn un motivn - lider in proze ("Ideas and Motifs - Prose Poems"), published in Vilna in 1907. He also made the acquaintance of the Yiddish writer Isaac Leib Peretz, whom he greatly admired. Peretz recognised Der Nister's literary talents, and helped and encouraged him to publish his prose Hekher fun der Erd ("Higher than the Earth"), published in Warsaw in 1910.

In 1912, Kahanovich married Rokhel Zilberberg, a teacher. Their daughter, Hodel, was born in July 1913, shortly after the publication of his third book, Gezang un gebet ("Song and Prayer") in Kiev. At the outbreak of World War I, he found work in the timber industry, which gave him exemption from military service. He continued to write and produced in 1918/19 the first of his books for children, Mayselech in ferzn ("Erzählungen in Versen"; "Stories in Verse"). Also at this time he translated several of Andersen'sfairy tales.