FRIEDLAND

FRIEDLAND, East European family originating in Bohemia, presumably from the Bohemian town Friedland (Frydlant). During the 17th century NATHAN FRIEDLAND was known as the "head of the community and head of the province of Bohemia." During the 19th century, members of the family are found in Russia. MESHULLAM FEIVEL (1804–1854), a wealthy merchant of Slutsk, moved to Dvinsk in 1846 and was often among the delegates representing the communities of Lithuania before the authorities. His sons MEIR (d. 1902) and MOSES ARYEH LEIB (1826–1899) moved to St. Petersburg, where they ranked among the wealthiest Jews and philanthropists in the community. Moses for more than 30 years was general army contractor for the Russian government. He founded a Jewish orphanage with a school of handicrafts in St. Petersburg, and erected an old-age home in Jerusalem. In 1892 he presented his collection of about 13,000 Hebrew books (including 32 incunabula) and 300 manuscripts which he had assembled over many years to the Asiatic Museum in St. Petersburg (now the Leningrad Institute for Oriental Studies). The thousands of Hebrew books already in the museum were combined with his collection, given the name of Bibliotheca Friedlandiana. The bibliographer S. Wiener\>\> catalogued these books (up to the letter lamed) in Kohelet Moshe (8 pts., 1893–1936). The genealogy and some of the history of the family is given by I.T. Eisenstadt and S. Wiener in Da'at Kedoshim (1897). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: S. Wiener, Kohelet Moshe, pt. 2 (1895), vii–xi. (Yehuda Slutsky) FRIEDLAND, ABRAHAM HYMAN FRIEDLAND, ABRAHAM HYMAN (Ḥayyim Abraham; 1891–1939), poet, short-story writer, and educator. Friedland, who was born in Hordok, near Vilna, immigrated to America at the age of 15. In 1911 he founded the National Hebrew School in New York. In 1921 he assumed the post of superintendent of the Cleveland Hebrew Schools, and in 1924 was   also appointed the first director of the Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education. He was a leading member of the Jewish community in Cleveland and a champion of the community Jewish school which featured an intensive Hebraic curriculum and included a strong emphasis on the Zionist ideal. He wrote poems, short stories, and articles, edited educational texts, and published essays in Hebrew, English, and Yiddish on Hebrew literature. His poems and stories were collected in two volumes at the end of his life, Sonettot ("Sonnets," 1939), and Sippurim ("Stories," 1939), and in a posthumous volume of poems, Shirim ("Poems," 1940). His Sippurim Yafim, stories designed for children, were reissued in three volumes by the Cleveland Bureau of Jewish Education (1962). His narrative sonnets deal with the pathetic side of life, and his stories mainly portray American Jewish types. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. Epstein, Soferim Ivrim be-Amerikah, 2 (1952), 311–23; Waxman, Literature, 4 (1960), 1251–55; A. Ben-Or, Toledot ha-Sifrut ha-Ivrit be-Dorenu, 1 (1954), 139–41; Sefer Zikhronot le-Ḥ.A. Friedland (1940). (Eisig Silberschlag)