Chaim Grinberg

Chaim Grinberg ( Russian Ха́им Гри́нберг ; * 1889 in the village of Todireschti, Belz District , Bessarabia Governorate ; † March 14, 1953 in New York City ) was a Russian journalist , publicist and Zionist .

Life

Early years in Russia

Grinberg grew up near Kalarasch and received traditional Jewish education. At the age of 15 he moved to Chisinau , where he became enthusiastic about the ideas of Zionism and became a co-organizer and activist of the youth organization Young Zion (1903). He wrote for them the so-called Dubossari program (with the assistance of AI Golani-Jagolnitzer), which was published in Russian in the Kischinauer newspaper Chronik des Jewish Lebens in January 1906. His extraordinary talent for rhetoric showed up early on .

After some time in Odessa , Grinberg came to Moscow in 1914 . He edited the magazine Morgendämmerung there and, after it was closed by the censors, the weekly paper Jüdisches Leben and he joined the Mensheviks . He took part in a number of literary and artistic anthologies, most of which appeared in the Safrut publishing house in Petrograd and later in Berlin . In 1916 he published a book with the translated articles of Achad Ha'am . In 1917 he made interlinear translations of his poems from Hebrew for Wladislaw Felizianowitsch Chodassewitsch for the Jewish anthology : Collection of young Jewish poetry . The collection was edited by Khodassevich and Lew Borissowitsch Jaffe , provided with an introduction by Mikhail Ossipowitsch Gershenson and was published by Safrut in Moscow in 1918 . After the October Revolution , he lectured on medieval Hebrew literature and Greek tragedy at Kharkov University and edited the Kiev Hebrew magazine Kadima ( Forward ).

Years of emigration

In 1921 Grinberg first emigrated to Berlin, where he became editor of the Hebrew weekly newspaper Ha-Olam (Die Welt) , the official organ of the World Zionist Organization , and the monthly magazine Atidenu (Our Future) .

1924 Grinberg was in the US editor of the Yiddish main organ of the Zionist movement in America ( Labor Zionist Party ) The Yiddish Kemfer . From 1934 he edited together with Marie Syrkin (1899–1989), daughter of Nachman Syrkins , the English magazine Jewish Frontiers of the League for Labor Palestine , which he edited until the end of his life. In 1934 he became a member of the Central Committee of the Labor Zionist Party of America. He was theoretician and leader of the Socialist Jewish Workers' Party Poale Zion in the USA. During the Second World War he was chairman of the Executive Committee of the Zionist Emergency Council of America . In 1946 he became director of the Department of Education and Culture of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Agency in the USA. In 1952 he founded the Israel Institute at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

All of Grinberg's administrative positions quickly took on a symbolic and institutional character, as he devoted himself more to ideological activity and published a large number of programmatic and theoretical works, so that he acquired the reputation of the leading theoretician of secular Judaism in the USA. His essayistic work was given particular weight in connection with the general crisis in the country's secular Jewish life in the post-war period with the destruction of the traditional Jewish centers in Europe.

Although Grinberg was not a follower of communist ideology, he held socialist views until the end of his life . With his work he campaigned for a synthesis of the ideology of Zionism and a Jewish homeland in the Middle East with the ideals of the socialist labor movement, pacifism and universalism , which in his opinion are characteristic of the Jewish spirit (see his essay The Universalism of the Chosen People ). In 1937 he justified his moderate stance on communist ideology and the national freedom movements with a series of essays in the form of letters to the communist friend and to Gandhi .

In 1946 Grinberg published an anthology of the Yiddish works of the poet Chaim Nachman Bialik with its own foreword and comments.

In 1954, the Department of Education and Culture of the Jewish Agency founded the Hayim Greenberg Teachers Institute in Jerusalem , which gives young Hebrew teachers a deeper foundation in Jewish studies.

Works

• Jewish Culture and Education in the Diaspora . Department of Education and Culture, World Zionist Organization, New York 1951.
• The Inner Eye (selected essays). Jewish Frontier, New York, Volume 1 (1953 and 1958), Volume 2 (1958), Volume 3 (1964). Literary Licensing Llc 2011, ISBN 978-1258085506 .
• Hayim Greenberg's Anthology (Ed. Marie Syrkin). Wayne State University, Detroit 1968.

swell

• Jewish Telegraphic Agency (March 16, 1953): Dr. Hayim Greenberg Jewish Agency Leader, Dead; Funeral Today (accessed October 9, 2015)
• Jewish Telegraphic Agency (March 16, 1953): Israel President, Jewish Agency Mourn Death of Dr. Greenberg (accessed October 9, 2015)
• Robert M. Seltzer: Hayim Greenberg, Jewish Intellectual. In: Carole S Kessner (Ed.): The "Other" New York Jewish Intellectuals . New York University Press 1994, pp. 25-50. (accessed on October 9, 2015)
• Greenberg, Hayim . In: Rafael Medoff, Chaim I. Waxman: The A to Z of Zionism . Scarecrow Press 2009, p. 79. (accessed October 9, 2015)
• The David S. Wyman Institute: Greenberg, Hayim (accessed October 9, 2015)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jewisch Telegraphic Agency (September 7, 1932): Income and Membership of Young Poale Zion Doubled (accessed on 8 October 2015)
2. ↑ Jewish Virtual Library: Gandhi, the Jews & Zionism: A Letter to Gandhi, by Hayim Greenberg (1937) (accessed October 9, 2015)
3. ^ Jewish Virtual Library: Gandhi, the Jews & Zionism: An Answer to Gandhi, by Hayim Greenberg (1939) (accessed October 9, 2015)
4. ^ Jewish Telegraphic Agency (September 8, 1955): US Hebrew Teachers Offered 11-month Advanced Training Course in Israel (accessed October 9, 2015)