Harold U. Ribalow (July 1, 1919 – October 22, 1982) was an American writer, editor, and anthologist.
Background and family
editHarold Uriel Ribalow was born in 1918[1] in Russia and immigrated to the United States as a small child.[2] In 1921 his father, Menachem Ribalow, founded a newspaper for Jewish immigrants called Hadoar; the paper was published in New York and distributed nationwide.[2] Ribalow and his wife, Shoshana, were the parents of a daughter, Reena Ben-Ephraim, and a son, Meir Z. Ribalow.[2]
Career
editRibalow worked for the Israel Bond Organization in New York for 30 years. Ribalow was a sports columnist for Hadoar and sports editor of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.[3] He was contributor to The New York Times Book Review, Commentary, Saturday Review, and The Nation.[2]
Ribalow was a member of the Jewish Academy of Arts and Sciences.[2]
Arthur Hertzberg credited Ribelow with "rediscovering" novelist Henry Roth, who published Call It Sleep in 1934 and seemingly disappeared. Ribelow found him on a farm in Maine and persuaded him to permit a new edition of the novel.[2] Ribalow wrote an introduction to the new edition, which was published by Pageant Books in 1960.[2][4] Years later, when Roth was awarded the Ribalow Prize -named in Ribalow's honour - Roth wrote to Ribalow's son, Meir Z. Ribalow, "Thanks for the encomia. Things like that keep me alive, I'm sure: what little is left me capable of feeling swells with pride like the staves of an old barrel when filled. Harold, to whom I owe so much, would have been happy to witness the occasion."[4]
Ribalow was the editor of several collections of Jewish short stories, The Chosen, This Land, These People, These Your Children, and My Name Aloud.[2]
The Harold U. Ribalow Prize is named in his honour.[5]
Books
edit- The Jew in American Sports (1948) In 1983, the New York Jewish Week described The Jew in American Sports as. "the quintessential bar mitzvah gift of the 1950s and 1960s.[5][6]
- The World's Greatest Boxing Stories
- Daniel Mendoza, Fighter from Whitechapel (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, Inc., 1962)
- Autobiographies of American Jews
- The Great Jewish Books (1952, edited with Samuel Caplan)
- Fighting Heroes of Israel
- The History of Israel's Postage Stamps
- What's Your Jewish I.Q.?
- The Tie That Binds, Ribalow's final book, was a series of interviews with American Jewish writers.[5]
References
edit- ^ "Harold U. Ribalow". www.jewishsports.net. Retrieved 2021-01-20.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "HAROLD U. RIBALOW, WRITER ON JEWISH THEMES". New York Times. 26 October 1982. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
- ^ "Harold U. Ribalow, Writer On Jewish Themes". The New York Times. October 26, 1982. p. D24. Retrieved 2022-08-05.
- ^ a b Ribalow, Meir (14 January 1996). "Lost and Found". New York Times. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
- ^ a b c "Book award honors Ribalow". New York Jewish Week. 25 May 1983.
- ^ Ribalow, Harold U. 1919-1982 (Harold Uriel) WorldCat Identities