Thursday, 22 January 2015

SHNEUR-ZALMEN BIKHOVSKI

SHNEUR-ZALMEN BIKHOVSKI (1865-September 14, 1934)
Born in Korets, Volhynia, into a Hassidic family, he attended primary school until age seventeen; he later studied philosophy and natural science in Vienna and graduated with as a doctor of medicine in Warsaw.  While still a student, he wrote articles for Voskhod (Sunrise).  He joined Chovevei tsiyon (Lovers of Zion), visited Palestine, and participated in several Zionist congresses.  He was one of the first to begin writing in the Polish press about Zionism.  He was prominent psychiatrist, and he published in his field over 100 works in Yiddish, Hebrew (Hatsfira [The times], Hatekufa [The epoch]), Polish, Russian, German, and French.  In Almanakh fun tsen-yorikn yubileum fun moment (Almanac for the tenth anniversary of Moment) (Warsaw, 1921), he published a treatise entitled “Yudishe nerven un yudishe degeneratsye” (Jewish nerves and Jewish degeneration), in which he came out against the interpretation of Lombrozo and others that the Jewish race was degenerating.  He published articles in Moment, Haynt (Today), and the monthly journal Dos kind (The child).  He was a member of numerous scientific societies in Poland and elsewhere and a founder of a medical seminar in Warsaw to study the physical and psychological state of Jews.  From 1823 he was a member of the Warsaw metropolitan managing committee and a leader of the Jewish community of Warsaw.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 1; A. Eynhorn, in Haynt (Warsaw) (September 27, 1935).


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