BRAININ, REUBEN

(1862-1939)

   American Hebrew and Yiddish author of Russian origin. He was born in Belorussia and lived for a time in Vienna and Berlin. At the beginning of the 20th century he encouraged the infusion of humanistic themes and new literary forms into Hebrew literature. From 1909 he lived in the US and Canada. During his later years he devoted himself to journalism, through which means he supported Jewish settlement in the Russian province of Birobidjan. He edited a number of Hebrew and Yiddish periodicals.