In the Valley of Death

Born in Ukraine, Chaim Lieberman was a prolific Yiddish essayist and literary critic. Lieberman wrote a regular column in the Yiddish daily Yiddishes tageblat and, as an active Labor Zionist, was a leading figure in the establishment of the secular Yiddish schools of the Jewish National Worker’s Alliance (Yidish-natsyonaler arbeter farband) in the United States. In the 1930s, Lieberman become an Orthodox Jew and joined the religious Zionist movement, from which vantage point he began to attack left-wing Yiddish writers. He was a prominent critic of Sholem Asch’s trilogy of Christological novels, which caused controversy in the American Jewish community.