Writers, Musicians & Cultural Figures
People born in Khotyn, educated there, or connected through family helped carry Jewish literature and music far beyond the town. BessarabiaSIG’s gallery of people connected with Khotyn introduces several of them.
Moyshe Gitsis (1894–1986)
Born in Khotyn, Gitsis wrote Yiddish stories, novels, and plays. His life took him between the Russian Empire and the United States before he settled in Chicago. He began publishing stories in 1927 and later edited a literary journal. Amateur theatre groups performed his plays in Chicago and New York.
Yisroel Goykhberg (1894–1970)
Goykhberg, listed by BessarabiaSIG as Srul Goichberg, attended school in Khotyn. After emigrating to the United States in 1913, he became a Yiddish teacher, poet, and translator. He taught in Boston and New York, and many of his poems for children were set to music.
Yeshayahu Lerner
BessarabiaSIG includes the writer Yeshayahu Lerner among Khotyn’s literary figures and gives his birthplace as Khotyn, around 1879. Its gallery provides a starting point for exploring his work and the town’s connections with Yiddish literature.
Ruth Rubin (1906–2000)
The folklorist and singer Ruth Rubin grew up in a family from Khotyn. She collected Yiddish songs in North America, recording singers whose repertoires carried memories of Eastern European Jewish life. Her recordings preserve voices, melodies, and everyday songs that might otherwise have been lost.
Rose Jaffe
Rose Jaffe carried songs remembered from Khotyn and from her years of wartime displacement into later life. A recording discussed by Yiddish Song of the Week preserves her singing and the history behind a song from Transnistria. Her story also appears on our migration page.
Sources and further reading
Biographical sources · Migration and diaspora · Schools and education
Biographies differ on some birthplaces. The account of Goykhberg here follows the Congress for Jewish Culture in identifying Khotyn as the place of his schooling. Rubin’s family connection is used here because published accounts differ on whether she was born in Khotyn or Montreal.