Eliakum Zunser

Born in Vilna, he grew up poor and first worked braiding lace in Kovno, where he was associated with the devout, moralistic Musar movement of Rabbi Israel Salanter.

Later, he was drawn to the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, and adopted a more modern Orthodox Judaism that renounced superstition.

However, his life took a tragic turn: not only did his wife die of cholera in the next decade, but all of their nine children as well, and he became, again quoting Liptzin, "a prophet of doom, admonishing his co-religionists not to venture too date along the alluring road of western enlightenment and assimilation..." [Liptzin, 1972, 49] When that doom came, in the form of the anti-Semitic reaction and pogrom after the assassination of Alexander II, he became again a comforter, as well as a Zionist, affiliated with the Hovevei Zion and Bilu pioneers, writing songs such as "Die Sokhe" ("The Plough") and "Shivath Zion" ("Homecoming to Zion").

[2] However, life in New York was not conducive to his muse, and he wrote little in the years after his arrival in America, mostly poems rather than songs.

Zunser was saved from penury in his final years by a benefit performance on his behalf held at Cooper Union on March 30, 1905, which raised enough money to give him a pension.