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
Article
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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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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Sampter, Jessie Ethel (1883-1938), Zionist poet and educator
Amy Feinstein
Sampter, Jessie Ethel (22 March 1883–11 November 1938), Zionist poet and educator, was born in New York City, the daughter of Rudolph Sampter, a lawyer, and Virginia Kohlberg. Her mother came from a traditional German-Jewish household, and her father, the son of East European Jewish immigrants, was an atheist affiliated with the Ethical Culture Society. Her father was a strong and supportive influence, reading and encouraging Sampter’s early writing....
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Syrkin, Marie (1899-1989), writer, educator, and Zionist activist
Carole S. Kessner
Syrkin, Marie (23 March 1899–01 February 1989), writer, educator, and Zionist activist, was born in Switzerland, the only daughter of Nachman Syrkin, the theoretician of socialist Zionism, and Bassya Osnos, a feminist socialist Zionist. Nachman Syrkin was the author of The Jewish Socialist State...
