LEON
KHAZANOVITSH (October 5, 1882[1]-September 17, 1925)
The adopted name of Casriel Shuv, he
was born in Shirvint (Širvintos), Vilna district, Lithuania. His father was the town ritual slaughterer
and cantor (from which he took his later name Khazanovitsh [lit., “son of a
cantor,” as a sort of Russo-Jewish patronymic—JAF]). He studied in religious elementary school and
yeshivas, later turning his attention to secular subject matter. Around 1904 he joined the Labor Zionist
movement, which at the time had just begun to organize, and before and after
the Russian Revolution of October 1905, he quickly became (using the party name
of Casriel) a traveling agitator and organizer of the party through the cities
and towns of Lithuania and Poland. At
the beginning of 1906, he was arrested, spent several months in the Petrokov
Prison, and was exiled deep into Russia, which for him turned out well as he
fled abroad. In Switzerland, where he
lived for one and one-half years, he studied foreign languages and philosophy. In 1907 he returned to Vilna, and from there
he went on to Cracow and contributed there (in July) to the first conference of
the Labor Zionist Party. In 1908 he
became editor of the party organ for Galicia, Der yudisher arbayter (The Jewish laborer), initially in Cracow and
later in Lemberg. In the collection Di yugend (The youth), which Zerubavel
published in Vilna (summer 1908), he placed his first long work: “Di
velt-virtshaftlekhe grund-gezets fun tsienizm” (The world-economic basic law of
Zionism), an essay which strengthened his reputation as a serious theoretician
in the party. At the first Yiddish
Language Conference in Czernowitz (August 1908), he was one of the most active
speakers on behalf of the national radical groups and was selected as secretary
of the bureau to lead the fight for the rights and due respect of the Yiddish
language. At that time he was one of the
most important cofounders of the Labor Zionist world union, in whose
secretariat he was later active over the course of many years as an organizer,
speaker, and writer. On assignment for
the party in 1909, he made a trip to North America and from there to
Argentina. In Buenos Aires he was a
cofounder of the biweekly organ of the local Labor Zionist organization: Broyt un ere (Bread and honor), which
existed until 1910. In Argentina, he was
introduced to life in the colonies of YIKO (Jewish Cultural Organization). The despotism of the YIKO administration
toward the colonists profoundly shocked him, and from that point on he led a
bitter struggle with the YIKO satraps, created in the colonies an association
for mutual aid, and campaigned for an organized resistance against the leaders
of YIKO. The latter reported him to the
authorities as a dangerous anarcho-terrorist, leading to his arrest and
deportation from the country in chains.
He returned to Lemberg, where he again became editor of Der yidisher arbayter, and on the
condition of the Jewish colonies in Argentina he published his pamphlet: Der krizis fun der idisher kolonizatsye in
argentine un der moralisher bankrot fun der “yiko”-administratsye (The
crisis in Jewish colonization in Argentina and the moral bankruptcy of the YIKO
administration) (Stanislav, 1910), 128 pp.
In 1911 he became a member of the bureau of the Labor Zionist
association. On behalf of the bureau, in
1912 he made a trip to Canada and spent several months in Montreal where he
edited the organ of the local free socialists: Di folkstsaytung (The people’s newspaper). In 1913 he settled in Vienna and until 1919
was the secretary of the Labor Zionist world association. Following the outbreak of WWI, he departed
for The Hague, Holland, and (in the summer of 1915) founded the “Yidishe
arbeter-korespondents” (Jewish labor correspondence), an organ to inform the
international socialist press about the Jewish question and to popularize the
idea of national-personal autonomy and a national Jewish home in
Palestine. He later moved to London,
where—together with Morris Meyer, the editor of London’s Tsayt (Times), to which Khazanovitsh was a long-time contributor—he
founded the “Arbeter-farband” (Workers’ Alliance). In 1916 he moved to New York. There, with Ber Borochov, he led a campaign
on behalf of a “Jewish Congress.” For a
time (summer 1916), he edited the Labor Zionist organ in America: Der idisher kempfer (The Jewish
fighter). After the Russian Revolution
of 1917, he returned to Europe. He
contributed to the most important international socialist conferences of that
era. In 1919 at the conference of the
world union of Labor Zionism in Vienna, with all his energy he attempted not to
allow the Labor Zionist party to split into right and left factions, and when
this proved fruitless, he experienced the rift in the party as a personal
calamity. In 1920 after a second time in
the United States, for a short time he co-edited the daily party organ, Di tsayt (The times), but he could find
no place for himself in the party now that it had split apart. The wave of pogroms in Ukraine broke him
spiritually and physically even more. He
settled in Berlin and, isolated from everyone, threw himself completely into
journalistic work. He regularly wrote
pieces for: Tsayt in London; Idishe tsaytung (Jewish newspaper) in
Buenos Aires; Keneder odler (Canadian
eagle) in Montreal; and Tsukunft
(Future) in New York; among others. In
his articles and correspondence pieces, he was mainly concerned at the time
with describing the Jewish catastrophe in Ukraine. He also published in book form: Der yidisher khurbn in ukraine, materyaln un
dokumentn (The Jewish destruction in Ukraine, materials and documents)
(Berlin, 1920), 108 pp. In the last
years of his life, he became interested in the work of ORT (Association for the
Promotion of Skilled Trades) among Jewish farmers in Carpathian Russia, and it
was while engaged in this work that he died in the village of Volkhovtse.
Sources:
Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2 (with
a bibliography); Zerbavel, ed., Yidisher
arbeter-pinkes, tsu der geshikhte fun der poyle-tsien bavegung (Jewish
labor records, on the history of the Labor Zionist movement) (Warsaw: Naye
kultur, 1928), pp. 481-87; A. Sh. Yuris, Kemfer
un dikhter (Fighters and poets) (Riga, 1931), pp. 63-67; Y. Rabinovitsh, in
Yoyvl-bukh keneder odler (Jubilee
volume for Keneder odler) (Montreal,
1932), see index; Borekh Hoyberman, in Argentine
zamlbukh di prese (Argentinian collection for Di prese) (Buenos Aires, 1938), see index; L. Shpizman, in Geshikhte fun der tsienistisher
arbeter-bavegung fun tsofn-amerike (History of the Zionist labor movement
in North America) (New York, 1955), see index.
Borekh Tshubinsk
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