ELYE-LEYB MARGOLIS-MUNTSHIK

ELYE-LEYB MARGOLIS-MUNTSHIK (September 9, 1882-October 21, 1970)

            He was born in Bialystok, Russian Poland.  He received a traditional Jewish education, and secular knowledge he acquired privately.  In his early youth he became a business employee and lived in central Russia (in the cities of Oryol and Yelets), later in Lodz.  After the second Zionist congress, he began Zionist activities among youth.  In 1906 he came with the second aliya to the land of Israel.  He worked in Kfar Saba, later moving to Yafo (Jaffa).  He managed the head office of “Hapoel Hatsair” (Zionist youth) and became secretary and administrator of weekly newspaper Hapoel hatsair.  In 1908 he returned to Russia.  He served as a delegate to Zionist congresses in 1908 and 1913.  During WWI he lived in Moscow and in Nizhny Novgorod and took care of Hapoel Hatsair business and activities on behalf of Jewish war refugees.  In 1918 he organized the Kharkov Pioneer Conference.  He cofounded the Bialystok democratic Jewish community council.  He returned to Israel in 1920.  He renewed his work with the administration of Hapoel Hatsair.  He cofounded the workers’ bank, the Tel Nordau quarter, the insurance company Haseneh, and Arkhion Haavoda (Workers’ archive).  In 1924 he visited Romania on assignment from the Jewish National Fund.  He published pamphlets on banking and home construction, as well as memoirs.  His pamphlet on the “Pioneer” movement appeared in both Yiddish and Russian.  He also published articles in: Hashaḥarit (The dawn), Haynt (Today), and Moment (Moment)—in Warsaw; Unzer lebn (Our life) in Bialystok; Hashiloaḥ (The shiloah) in Odessa-Jerusalem; and Hapoel hatsair, Haarets (The land), Davar (Word), and Misḥar vetaasiya (Commerce and industry)—all in Tel Aviv.  He was the initiator of the idea for a biblical museum.  His pen names included: Al”m, Ben-Efraim, Avi-Efraim, and Poel Shehitaker.  He died in Ḥolon, Israel.

Sources: D. Tidhar, in Entsiklopedyah leḥalutse hayishuv uvonav (Encyclopedia of the pioneers and builders of the yishuv), vol. 4 (Tel Aviv, 1950), pp. 1868-60; L. Shpizman, Khalutsim in poyln, antologye fun der khalutsisher bavegung (Pioneers in Poland, anthology of the Pioneers movement), vol. 1 (New York, 1959), pp. 3-5.

Yankev Kahan