ABSTRACT
Born on 12 August 1884 in Okhrimovo near Uman in the tsarist province of Kiev, David Bergelson was the youngest of his affluent and pious parents’ nine children. His father, Rafael, was a follower of R. Dovid Twersky, the Hasidic rebbe of Talnye, 1 in honour of whom he named the ‘miracle son’ of his old age. Although steeped in Jewish learning, Rafael Bergelson had no secular education: he spoke no Russian, merely enough Polish and, perhaps, Ukrainian to conduct his business. As one of the district’s wealthiest lumber and grain merchants, he made his home a centre for brokers, leaseholders, and landowners. His son David was given an eclectic education that combined traditional Jewish studies with secular subjects taught by a local maskil, enabling the boy to acquire fluency in Hebrew and Russian, in addition to his native Yiddish.
