LEYB KHAZAN (ḤAZAN)

LEYB KHAZAN (ḤAZAN) (October 24, 1891-April 15, 1969)

            He was born in Bialystok.  He studied in the yeshivas of Maltsh (Malecz), Slonim, and Mir.  He lived in Vilna until 1912.  At the time of the Russian Revolution he lived in Moscow and was, among other things, the first secretary of the Habima Theater.  In 1920 he returned to Poland, where he worked as director of a Tarbut school in Kovel (Kovle), Volhynia, and later was a teacher in the Bialystok Hebrew high school.  He immigrated to Israel in 1935 and after a short time began teaching and taught literature at the Rehovot High School until his retirement in 1958.  He contributed to Dos naye lebn (The new life) and Unzer lebn (Our life) in Bialystok, as well as for Hebrew serial publications in Russia and Poland.  He adapted the Mishnaic order of Nezikin (Damages) for the Hebrew school.  His Hebrew novel Geula, roman (Deliverance, a novel) (Kovel, 1930), 230 pp., depicts factory life in Bialystok.  He died in Ḥolon.

Sources: Byalistoker leksikon (Bialystok handbook) (Bialystok, 1935); A. Sh. Hershberg, in Pinkes byalistok (New York) 1 (1949), see index; https://library.osu.edu/projects/hebrew-lexicon/01384.php

Yankev Kahan