ARNOLD KRITSHMAR-YIZRAELI

ARNOLD KRITSHMAR-YIZRAELI (April 21, 1878-June 19, 1962)

            He was a journalist, born in Zhitomir,[1] Ukraine.  His Jewish given name was Arn.  He descended from a semi-assimilated family.  He lived in Odessa, Kishinev, Vilna, and St. Petersburg, where he studied in the law faculty.  He was a follower of “Ḥibat Tsiyon” (Love of Zion), switching in 1907 to the Socialist Revolutionaries, and several years later he returned to be an active Zionist.  He went with the Jewish Legion to the land of Israel and returned in 1920 to the United States.  Over the last ten years of his life, he was severely ill.  He wrote mostly for the Russian and Russian Jewish press.  He began writing in Yiddish with correspondence pieces and features in St. Petersburg’s Fraynd (Friend), using the pen name Ka-Re.  He went on to contribute to: Haynt (Today), using the pen name A. Eynzamer, Dovid Pinski’s Idishe vokhnshrift (Yiddish weekly writing), Tsukunft (Future), and Dos naye folk (The new people) in New York; Chaim Zhitlovsky’s Dos naye leben (The new life), Varhayt (Truth), and the daily newspaper Di tsayt (The times) using the pen name Arnold.  He was a regular contributor to Morgn-zhurnal (Morning journal) and later to Tog-morgn-zhurnal (Day-morning journal).  He served as co-editor of the weekly Der idisher kongres (The Jewish congress).  In 1924 he published Idishe institutsyes (Jewish institutions) which lasted for several issues.  He also published the pamphlet: In kamf far yisroel, finf yor amerikaner tsienizm (In the struggle for Israel, five years of American Zionism) (New York, 1948), 102 pp., using the pen name “A. K. Israeli.”  He died in New York.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3; Yeshurin archive, YIVO (New York); Geshikhte fun der tsienistisher arbeter-bavegung fun tsofn-amerike (History of the Zionist labor movement in North America) (New York, 1955); Tog (New York) (June 20, 1962).

Berl Cohen

---

[1] According to one of Kritshmar’s autobiographies, but according to another it was Raygrodof (Rayhorodok), near Zhitomir.  Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3, claims it was Berdichev on April 19, 1881.