DOVID (DAVID) IZAKOVITSH

DOVID (DAVID) IZAKOVITSH (1874-April 13, 1949)

Born in Shavel (Šiauliai), Lithuania.  He studied in religious schools.  From age fourteen he taught himself the subjects of a general education.  In 1893 he came to London.  He mastered the trades of compositor and printer, and he joined the anarchist movement.  From 1900 to 1906, he published anarchist brochures in Yiddish which he typeset and printed himself.  In 1903 he was in Leeds, England, the head of a major publishing house, and he became the manager of the anarchist journal, Arbeter fraynd (Worker’s friend).  At the same time, he published works of important anarchist writers in Yiddish translation.  In 1907 he emigrated to the United States.  He worked in New York as a compositor, and later he became the typesetter and proofreader for the publisher of Tog (Day).  Together with Dr. Yankev Merison, he founded the Kropotkin Literature Society and its publishing house.  Using the pseudonym, G. David, he translated Olive Schreiner’s Dreams (as Troymer) (New York, 1910), 122 pp.; Peter Kropotkin’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary (as Memuarn fun a revolutsyoner) (New York, 1915), 524 pp.; Sidney and Beatrice Webb’s History of Trade Unionism (as Di geshikhte fun treid-yunyonizm in England) (New York, 1912); and L. P. Edwards’s The Natural History of Revolution) (as Natur-geshikhte fun revolutsye) (New York).  He also translated for Fraye arbeter shtime (Free voice of labor) innumerable articles on social-political and economic themes.  Over a period of many years, he held an important position in the Jewish Writers Union in New York, and was at the head of the union’s activities on behalf of its members.  In intellectual circles he was considered a “revolutionary reformist.”  In his last years, he grew close to the Yidish natsionaler arbeter farband (Jewish National Workers Alliance).

Sources: B. Ts. Goldberg, in Tog (New York) (May 6, 1935); H. Frank, obituary in Fraye arbeter shtime (New York) (April 29, 1949); Yoysef Kahan, Di yidishe anarkhistishe bavegung in amerike (The Jewish anarchist movement in the United States) (Philadelphia, 1945), p. 230.