Leib Kuperstein

Leib Kuperstein was born in 1904 in Mărculești

Leib Kuperstein was born in 1904 in Mărculești, a Jewish farming colony in Bessarabia, then part of the Russian Empire. He was the only son of Sara and Shimshon Kuperstein. His father was an early member of Hovevei Zion and Mizrachi in Bessarabia and helped found a reformed heder in the town.

He studied at a heder, a Russian school and a Hebrew gymnasium, and led the local Hashomer Hatzair branch he founded. He later studied natural sciences and agriculture in Belgium and France, qualified as an agronomist, and then studied literature, philosophy and social sciences at the Sorbonne. He took part in the 15th Zionist Congress in Basel.

Back in Bessarabia he taught and ran Hebrew schools, including the Tarbut lyceum in Bălți. From 1935 to 1938 he published the Hebrew literary monthly Shurot, issuing 32 issues, until the Romanian government closed it in 1938. He then published another literary collection named Udim.

During World War II he fled to Bucharest and in 1940 immigrated to the Land of Israel with his family. In Tel Aviv he handled spokesmanship and public relations for the Histadrut and the workers' council. He wrote for papers such as Davar, Omer and Maariv, and published books and translations of Korney Chukovsky's children's books.

He died in 1992.