Ansky, S.

S. Ansky, Shloyme-Zanvel Rappaport (1863 1920), who wrote under the name Semyon Akimovich Ansky, was born in Belarus to a traditional, Yiddish-speaking Jewish family. He became a populist activist, ethnographer, and author of fiction, poetry, and drama in Yiddish and Russian. From 1911 to 1914, he traveled through villages as head of a Jewish ethnographic expedition. A story he heard during his researches became the foundation for his famous play, The Dybbuk.