The Faith Healer

Born into a Hasidic family in Rejowiec, Poland, Abraham Josef Dubelman lost his father and his older brother as a young child. He received a religious education before studying briefly in a Jewish public school. After apprenticing as an upholsterer, in 1925 Dubelman immigrated to Cuba, working for a time as a craftsman. His stories from the Cuban countryside were picked up by Yiddish newspapers in New York including the Forverts, and he eventually moved to Havana. Dubelman was also a journalist, writing editorials and literary criticism. In 1961, he moved to Miami, where he published his first and only work in English.