author
Judah Steinberg
1863–1908
A Hebrew and Yiddish writer with a gift for fables, stories, and children's literature, his work helped carry traditional Jewish life into modern literary form. He wrote with warmth and moral clarity, often drawing on the world he knew in Bessarabia and beyond.
1 Audiobook
In Those Days: The Story of an Old Man
by Judah Steinberg
About the author
Born in Lipkany, Bessarabia, Judah Steinberg came from a Hasidic family and received a deeply religious early education. He was later drawn to the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, and taught himself secular subjects alongside his traditional learning.
Steinberg became known as a writer and educator who worked in both Hebrew and Yiddish. He wrote stories, poems, fables, and children's pieces, and his fiction often centered on Jewish life with a mix of feeling, humor, and ethical reflection.
In the last part of his life he was active in Odessa, a major center of Jewish literary culture. Though he died relatively young in 1908, he left behind work that continued to be translated, published, and remembered by later readers.