TSVI-HIRSH EHRENRAYKH

TSVI-HIRSH EHRENRAYKH (1886-June 4, 1953)

            The brother of Khayim Ehrenraikh, he was born in Sukhari, Mohilev district, Byelorussia.  He studied in religious elementary school and synagogue study hall, later in the Mohilev Russian-Jewish “people’s school.”  He served in the Tsarist army in Grodno, fled, and lived under an assumed name in Cracow where he joined the Labor Zionists and contributed to propaganda activities of the party, while at the same time studying in a technical school.  After the failure of the 1905 Revolution, he fled to the United States (1906), where he became one of the creators of Labor Zionist party there.  He was a cofounder and for many years secretary as well of the first Jewish national radical school.  He helped to found the Jewish teachers’ seminary in New York.  Together with Dovid Pinski, Perets Hirshbeyn, and Mendl Elkin, he established in the 1920s “Unzer teater” (Our theater).  For fifteen years he was director of the labor division of the Jewish National Fund.  He was a delegate to a number of Zionist congresses.  Together with Sh. Bontshek, he published a collection entitled Geshikhte fun erets-yisroel (History of the land of Israel), and with Yankev Zerubavel and Sh. Bontshek, he published Yizker (Remembrance), a biographical chronicle of friends from Hashomer (The guard) and other Palestinian Zionists who had fallen in battle with Arab bandits.  He died in New York.

Sources: F. Kadishzon, in Dos vort (Mexico City) (June 24, 1953); P. Kruzo, in Undzer vort (Paris) (July 21, 1953); Y. Entin, in Idisher kemfer (New York) (July 27, 1956); M. Braun, Mit yidishe oygn (With Jewish eyes) (New York, 1958), pp. 263-64; P. Shteynvaks, Tsienistn (Zionists), vol. 1 (Buenos Aires, 1960), pp. 260-63; Y. Shmulevitsh, in Forverts (New York) (April 4, 1963).

Leyb Vaserman