{{Short description|Yiddish language author (1839–1915)}} [[File:Isaac Joel Linetzky line drawing portrait from Dos Poylishe Yungel.jpg|thumb|I.J. Linetzky from Dos Poylishe yungel (1921)]] '''Yitzkhok Yoel Linetzky''' ({{langx|yi|יצחק יואל לינעצקי}}, 1839–1915) was a [[Yiddish language]] author and early [[Zionism|Zionist]]. [[Sol Liptzin]] characterized him as "a master of the picturesque vitriolic phrase." [Liptzin, 1972, 46]
==Life==
He was raised a [[Hasidic Judaism|Hasidic Jew]] in [[Vinnytsia]], [[Podolia]] (now in [[Ukraine]]), but revolted against his violent schoolteachers and [[Kabbalah|cabalist]] father by aligning himself with the [[Haskalah]], the Jewish Enlightenment. His father tried to offset this development by marrying him at the age of fourteen to a twelve-year-old girl; he drew her away from Hasidism and [[Kabbalah]], and his father forced him to divorce and remarry, this time to what Liptzin describes as "a deaf, moronic woman".
Linetzky ran away to [[Odessa]], Ukraine, where he acquired a secular education. Attempting to leave for [[Germany]] to continue his education, he was stopped at the border and brought back, a virtual prisoner, to Vinitza. At 23, he managed again to escape, this time to the government-sponsored [[rabbi]]nical academy at [[Zhytomyr]], where he developed a close friendship with [[Abraham Goldfaden]].
Like [[Abraham Goldfaden]] and several other Yiddish-language writers of his generation, he came to prominence in the 1860s as a writer for ''[[Kol Mevasser]]''; like several others, he had first published in its [[Hebrew language]] sister publication ''[[Hamelitz]]''. With Goldfaden, he was later involved in several Yiddish language newspapers, including as joint editors of the short-lived weekly ''Yisrolik'' (July 1875–February 1876) almost immediately before Goldfaden founded the first professional [[Yiddish theater]] troupe.
The [[pogrom]]s following the 1881 assassination of Czar [[Alexander II of Russia]] made Linetzky into an early [[Zionism|Zionist]]. His 1882 booklet ''America or Israel'' aligned him with the [[Hovevei Zion]] movement, active in the Jewish colonization of [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]].
==Works==
His semi-autobiographical [[picaresque novel]], ''Dos Poylishe Yingl'' (''The Polish Lad''), an outright attack on the Hasidim, first appeared in installments in ''Kol Mevasser'' in 1867, and remained popular at least until the eve of [[World War II]].
Other works included a book of poems ''Der Beyzer Marshalik'' (''The Angry Master of Ceremonies'', 1879).
==References== *Liptzin, Sol, ''A History of Yiddish Literature'', Jonathan David Publishers, Middle Village, NY, 1972, {{ISBN|0-8246-0124-6}}, especially 45-46.
==External links== * [https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/search/person/%22Linetzky%2C%20Isaac%20Joel%2C%201839-1915%22 Books by I. J. Linetzky] in the [[Yiddish Book Center]] digital library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Linetzky, Yitzkhok Yoel}} [[Category:Yiddish-language writers]] [[Category:Jewish Ukrainian writers]] [[Category:1839 births]] [[Category:1915 deaths]] [[Category:Writers from Vinnytsia]] [[Category:Hovevei Zion]]