NEKHEMYE MOZESON

NEKHEMYE MOZESON (1853-December 10, 1926)

            He was born in Feodosiya, Crimea, into a family of scholars and rabbis.  At eight years of age, he moved with his parents to Odessa, where his father was a rabbi.  He received a Jewish and a general education with his father, in religious elementary schools, and in a secular high school.  In 1875 he completed rabbinical school in Zhitomir, went on to study in Odessa and St. Petersburg Universities, and in 1884 received his doctoral degree in Semitic languages.  Due to Russian anti-Semitism, he left Russia and for a time lived in Swtizerland and Germany.  In 1886 he arrived in the United States and settled in Philadelphia where he was rabbi for Conservative congregations; he later lived in Delaware and Portland, Oregon.  From 1908 he was in New York.  As a publicist he became known for his blunt articles against the government in the Slavic countries for their anti-Semitic policies.  He was the organizer of the anti-Russian demonstration to the Russian ambassador in Washington at the time of the Kishinev pogrom in 1903.  He was founder and editor of the Orthodox weekly newspaper Dos likht (The light) in Philadelphia (1891)—thirty-five issues appeared.  He later edited The Jewish Tribune in Portland (1902-1908) and later the same weekly in New York.  He wrote a number of entries for the Jewish Encyclopedia (London, 1905).  He also contributed to Herman Bernshteyn’s Haynt (Today) and from time to time to Yidishes tageblat (Jewish daily newspaper)—in New York.  He died in New York.

Sources: P. Vyernik, in Morgn zhurnal (New York) (December 12-13, 1926); D. B. Tirkel, in Pinkes fun amopteyl fun yivo (Records of the American division of YIVO), vol. 1 (New York, 1927-1928), p. 260; M. Frihman, Fuftsik yor geshikhte fun idishen lebn in filadelfye (Fifty years of Jewish life in Philadelphia), vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1934), p. 130; The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 8 (1943), p. 16.

Khayim Leyb Fuks