Gottheil, Richard James Horatio (13 October 1862–22 May 1936), professor and founder of the American Zionist movement, was born in Manchester, England, the son of Gustav Gottheil, a rabbi, and Rosalie Wollman. He was brought to the United States at the age of eleven upon his father’s appointment as rabbi of Temple Emanu-El in New York City. He graduated in 1881 from Columbia College, where his classmates and associates included ...
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Gottheil, Richard James Horatio (1862-1936), professor and founder of the American Zionist movement
Marianne Sanua
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Lewisohn, Ludwig (1883-1955), writer and translator
Stanley F. Chyet
Lewisohn, Ludwig (30 May 1883–31 December 1955), writer and translator, was born to acculturated Jewish parents, Minna Eloesser and Jacques Lewisohn, in Berlin. His father, a ne’er-do-well businessman, settled the family in a South Carolina village, where Minna Lewisohn had relatives, in 1890. But Lewisohn spent most of his childhood in Charleston where, he recalled, he strove to “forget his Jewish and his German past” and be accepted as “an American, a Southerner, and a Christian.” Graduating in 1901 from the College of Charleston with both a B.A. and an M.A., he began graduate studies in English literature at Columbia University in New York City, where in 1903 he earned another M.A. In New York he began to affirm his German and, ultimately, his Jewish origins. He was plagued by the anti-Semitism and xenophobia of American university life at that time, but as instructor of German at the University of Wisconsin (1910–1911) and subsequently as professor of German language and literature at Ohio State University (1911–1919) he established his credentials as a prime interpreter of modern European, especially German, literature....
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Logan, Rayford Whittingham (1897-1981), historian of the African diaspora, university professor, and civil rights and Pan-Africanist activist
Kenneth Robert Janken
Logan, Rayford Whittingham (07 January 1897–04 November 1981), historian of the African diaspora, university professor, and civil rights and Pan-Africanist activist, was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Arthur Logan and Martha Whittingham, domestic workers. Two circumstances of Logan’s parents are germane to his later life and work. Although he grew up in modest circumstances, his parents enjoyed a measure of status in the Washington black community owing to his father’s employment as a butler in the household of Frederic Walcott, Republican senator from Connecticut. And the Walcotts took an interest in the Logan family, providing them with occasional gifts, including money to purchase a house. The Walcotts also took an interest in Rayford Logan’s education, presenting him with books and later, in the 1920s and 1930s, introducing him to influential whites in government. Logan grew up on family lore about the antebellum free Negro heritage of the Whittinghams. It is open to question how much of what he heard was factual; nevertheless, he learned early to make class distinctions among African Americans and to believe that his elite heritage also imposed on him an obligation to help lead his people to freedom and equality....
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Lowenthal, Marvin Marx (1890-1969), writer and Zionist organizer
Susanne Klingenstein
Lowenthal, Marvin Marx (06 October 1890–15 March 1969), writer and Zionist organizer, was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania, the son of Louis S. Lowenthal, a jeweler, and Pauline Marx. At the age of fifteen he went to work in a local silk mill. Having risen from bobbin boy to assistant superintendent within six years, Lowenthal quit his job to enroll at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In February 1912 Lowenthal embarked on a rigorous course of humanistic studies and graduated with the class of 1915....
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Magnes, Judah Leon (1877-1948), rabbi, communal leader, and first chancellor and first president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem
Arthur A. Goren
Magnes, Judah Leon (05 July 1877–27 October 1948), rabbi, communal leader, and first chancellor and first president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, was born in San Francisco, California, the eldest of five children of David Magnes and Sophie Abrahamson. His father had emigrated from Poland at age fifteen in 1863 and his mother from eastern Prussia in 1872. When Magnes was five, the family moved to nearby Oakland, California, where his father opened a dry-goods store. The Magneses were a close-knit family. English was the language of the home, although Magnes’s mother and maternal grandmother insisted that the children learn German. The family belonged to the local Reformed congregation, where Magnes received his early religious education. From his father he gained an empathy for the Jewish religious traditions and Yiddish culture of Eastern Europe and from his mother a grounding in German culture. In later life his appreciation for both religious-cultural strands in American Jewish life made him an ideal mediator between the two....
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Wattles, John Otis (1809-1859), reformer and communitarian
Thomas D. Hamm
Wattles, John Otis (22 July 1809–20 September 1859), reformer and communitarian, was born in Goshen, Connecticut, the son of Erastus Wattles, a musical instrument maker, and Sarah Thomas. He received his education at the Goshen Academy. Growing up in the Congregational church, he underwent a conversion experience that drew him to consider a career as a foreign missionary. In 1833, after teaching for a few years, he entered the Oneida Institute at Whitestown, New York, a hotbed of evangelical reform associated with ...
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Zhitlowsky, Hayim (1865-1943), philosopher and theoretician of Jewish socialism, diaspora nationalism, and Yiddish culture
Deborah Dash Moore
Zhitlowsky, Hayim (1865–06 May 1943), philosopher and theoretician of Jewish socialism, diaspora nationalism, and Yiddish culture, was born in Uschatchi, a small town near Vitebsk, Russia, the son of Yosef Zhitlowsky, a successful flax merchant, and Hava Hasia Weinstein. His father, a child prodigy, combined rabbinical learning with hasidic pietism and business acumen with devotion to modern Jewish enlightenment. Zhitlowsky disliked the traditional Jewish elementary education he received in ...
