KHAYIM NAYGER

KHAYIM NAYGER (January 15, 1873-July 1944)

            He was born in the village of Otfinów, near Torne (Tarnów), western Galicia.  Over the years 1887-1889, he studied in Brod (Brody), and later turned to secular education.  He later worked in an insurance company in Tarnów, while also serving as a special agent for the Vienna enterprise “Phoenix” for western Galicia.  He participated in ten Zionist congresses (from the eleventh through the twentieth).  He was the founder of a Zionist weekly in Polish in Tarnów, one of the heads of the Jewish community and chair of the Jewish community council in Tarnów, chair of the Zionist Organization in western Galicia, and a member of the Tarnów city council.  He was on three occasions a candidate to the Polish Sejm.  From 1893 he was publishing articles in Polish, Hebrew, French, and Jewish-German journals.  In Yiddish he published in Lemberger togblat (Lemberg daily newspaper) and Yudishe tsaytung (Jewish newspaper).  Together with the Zionist leader Naftole-Meyer Roker, he founded Di yudishe morgenpost (The Jewish morning mail) in Vienna.  He also wrote under the pseudonyms: Ḥen, Ḥakhman, and Chen.  He wrote a commentary to the Mishnaic tractate, Pirke avot (Ethics of the fathers), entitled Avot levanim (Fathers to sons) (Jerusalem, 1937), 67 pp.  He settled in Haifa in 1937, where he served as chair of the general Zionists and a member of the local Jewish community council.  He died in Haifa

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2; D. Tidhar, in Entsiklopedyah leḥalutse hayishuv uvonav (Encyclopedia of the pioneers and builders of the yishuv), vol. 2 (Tel Aviv, 1947), see index.

Benyomen Elis