MORTKHE-ZEV REYZIN (MAX RAISIN)

MORTKHE-ZEV REYZIN (MAX RAISIN) (July 15, 1880-March 8, 1957)

            He was born in Nesvizh (Nesvyžius), Minsk district, Byelorussia.  He joined his father in the United States in 1892.  He graduated from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati and in 1913 received his doctoral degree from the University of Mississippi.  He was among the first Reform rabbis to join the Zionist cause.  He mostly wrote in Hebrew and English and published numerous books in the two languages.  In Yiddish he published articles in: St. Petersburg’s Fraynd (Friend); Philadelphia’s Der shtern (The star); and Yidishes tageblat (Jewish daily newspaper), Dos idishe folk (The Jewish people), and Tsukunft (Future) in New York.  In Yiddish he wrote: Groyse yidn vos ikh hob gekent, eseyen (Great Jews whom I knew, essays) (New York: Tsiko, 1950), 277 pp.  He died in Florence, Alabama.

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 4; Getzel Kressel, Leksikon hasifrut haivrit (Handbook of Hebrew literature), vol. 2 (Merḥavya, 1967); Yaakov Tsuzmer, Beikve hador (In the footprints of a generation) (Montreal, 1957), index and special supplement; Arn Tsaytlin, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (New York) (April 1957).

Yekhezkl Lifshits