BLANK, SAMUEL LEIB

BLANK, SAMUEL LEIB (1893–1962), Hebrew novelist and short-story writer. Blank, who was born in the Ukraine, spent his formative years in Bessarabia and in 1922 settled in the United States. His early stories described the Jewish farmers of Bessarabia, and his tetralogy Ẓon, Adamah, Naḥalah (1930–33), and Moshavah (1936) focused upon a simple protagonist, significantly and symbolically called "Bo'az." Blank was not a subtle psychologist, but he vividly depicted the Jewish man of the soil in his primitive surroundings. When he attempted to portray the harsher realities of life after World War I, such as the pogroms in the Ukraine in his Bi-She'at Ḥerum (1932) or the maladjusted immigrant in America, as in Mr. Kunis (1934) or Iy ha-Dema'ot (1941), he verged on melodrama. Al Admat Amerikah (1958) and Eẓ ha-Sadeh (1961) were among his last works. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Waxman, Literature, 4 (19602), 1055–58; 5 (19602), 202–4; M. Ribalow, Im ha-Kad el ha Mabbu'a (1950), 237–43. (Eisig Silberschlag)