Meir Blinken

Blinken was born in 1879 in Pereiaslav, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), to Yankel Blinkin and Rys (Ruth) Kelman. There he studied at a religious Jewish primary school, followed by a business education in Kiev. == Career ==

After starting a family, Ruth Wisse, a scholar of Yiddish literature, wrote that Blinken was highly popular among his own generation of Yiddish-speaking Americans but that his reputation quickly diminished in the years after his death. Emanuel S. Goldsmith characterized Blinken as part of a generation of Yiddish writers in America who developed a new form of Yiddish literature, and both Goldsmith and Elman emphasized that the major legacy of Blinken's work was that it vividly evoked the atmosphere and characters of the very early Jewish diaspora in New York. Some of Blinken's collected works were published by the State University of New York Press in 1984, and have been included in other compendiums of Yiddish literature in the century after his death. == Personal life ==

Blinken died in 1915, at the age of 36 His son, Maurice Blinken, was an early backer of Israel and founded the American Palestine Institute which helped persuade the United States to back the creation of Israel. Two of Blinken's grandsons, Alan Blinken and Donald Blinken, served as U.S. ambassador to Belgium and Hungary, respectively. Meir Blinken was the great-grandfather of former United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken. ==References==