KÓBOR, TAMÁS

KÓBOR, TAMÁS (originally Adolf Bermann; 1867–1942), Hungarian author and journalist. Kóbor was born in Pressburg and raised amid the poverty of its ghetto district. He worked in a bank and began to write for the Budapest daily press and for A Hét, the literary periodical edited by his brother-in-law József Kiss. For several years he helped to edit the liberal newspaper Az Újság for which he himself wrote articles on topical and political issues, including Jewish rights. Having grown up at a time when the drift from Judaism was already under   way, Kóbor had no hesitation in advocating assimilation, although he remained sentimentally attached to Jewish culture. His concern with the problem of maintaining Jewish loyalties while supporting the Hungarian national cause is the central issue in the novel Ki a gettóból ("Out of the Ghetto," 1911). His many novels and short stories include Budapest (1901), A Halál ("Death," 1918), Pók Ádám hetvenhét élete ("The Seventy-Seven Lives of Adam Pók," 1923), and Hamlet az irodában ("A Hamlet in the Office," 1934). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: L. Steiner, in: IMIT (1942), 423; Magyar Zsidó Lexikon (1929), 92; B. Halmi, Kóbor Tamás, az iró és az ember (1935). (Baruch Yaron)