Early years Chaim Zhitlowsky was born in 1865, in the small town of
Ushachy, in the province of
Vitebsk Governorate, the
Russian Empire. When he was five years old, his parents moved to the capital of the province,
Vitebsk. On his mother's side, he was descended from artisans and merchants, and on his father's, came from an aristocratic and well-educated family. His father, Joseph, studied to be a rabbi in the
Yeshiva of
Volozhin, but chose to become a merchant. Though an ardent
Lubavich Chassid he was well versed in
Haskalah (enlightenment) literature and reportedly often recited satiric Haskalah tales and poems in Yiddish and Hebrew at family gatherings. Joseph Zhitlowsky's business prospered. He moved to a richer, more exclusive section of the city and kept an open house. A tutor of the Russian language was engaged for Chaim, but he continued his elementary religious studies at a
kheyder. Soon Chaim became friendly with high school students of his neighbourhood and began to read Russian literature. During this period he made his first foray into literature: translating the Yiddish version of ''
Uncle Tom's Cabin'' into Hebrew. On his 13th birthday (his
bar-mitzvah) Chaim made the acquaintance of Shloyme Rappaport, who was later to become
S. Ansky, the famous author of
The Dybuk. A warm, lifelong friendship developed between Zhitlowsky and Ansky, who had writing in common. For a short time they issued a handwritten (holographic) magazine called
Vitebsk Bells.
Early activity On entering the third grade of the Russian Gymnasium in 1879, Zhitlowsky came into contact with revolutionary circles, and, for a time, was estranged from Yiddish and other matters of Jewish interest, advocating for assimilation into
Russian culture. He rethought his positions, however, by the pogroms of the early 1880s, which dissipated his cosmopolitan interests. He left the gymnasium, and went to
Tula in 1881, and there was engaged in spreading Socialist Revolutionary propaganda. Shocked by the view of some members of that party who believed that pogroms were a step toward the liberation of the Russian people, he left the party. He turned, instead, to advocating for Jewish equality, and aligned with beliefs in the
Diaspora Nationalist movement. When he returned to Vitebsk he became involved in the then rising
Zionist movement. He was inspired by the vision of the Jewish colonies and a Jewish peasantry, but the religious character of that Zionism did not appeal to him. He sought to publish a magazine to propagandize "his idea"—a synthesis of Jewish nationalism and socialism. At first, his father was willing to finance this enterprise, but was talked out of it by an ardent Zionist friend. In 1885, Zhitlowsky tried to found a Jewish section of the illegal
Narodnya Volya party, but those in the central committee of the Narodnya Volya who believed in cosmopolitanism and assimilation defeated the Zhitlowsky project. This was a severe blow for the young Jewish revolutionary. His grandfather consoled him, pointing out the revolutionary character of the prophets, and of the great Jewish intellects of the later times. This quickened Zhitlowsky's interest in Jewish history. He soon established contact with a St. Petersburg group of the Narodnaya Volya. His first work, a treatise in Russian entitled
Thought of the Historical Fate of the Jewish People was published in
Moscow in 1887 when he was twenty-two. (Shortly before that he had been banished by the police from St. Petersburg). The liberal Russian press enthusiastically greeted and responded warmly to his ideas, but was met with scant favour among Jewish critics, because it contained no solution to the problems it treated. Several suspected him of being a Christian missionary. Zhitlowsky returned to Vitebsk for a short time, from there he went to
Galicia, where it was much easier to preach Socialist doctrines among the Jewish masses. He became acquainted with a group of Jewish revolutionists from
Zurich, who were engaged in disseminating radical literature in Yiddish. Toward the latter part of 1893, Zhitlowsky, now a Ph.D., aided by
Shloyme Rappaport, M. Rosenbaum and several other Russian radicals, founded the Federation of Russian Socialist Revolutionaries Abroad from which later developed the
Socialist Revolutionary Party. The group opposed dogmatic Marxism. The newspaper
The Russian Worker, appearing under Zhitlowsky's and Rappaport's editorship, spread propaganda among the masses. In 1898 the Verband published Zhitlowsky's theoretical work,
Socialism and the Fight for Political Freedom, written under the pen name Gregorovich. In this work, he tried to synthesize the three principal currents of the Russian revolutionary movement. From time to time, he contributed to several well-known Russian magazines, such as
Russkoye Bogastvo (Russian Wealth); articles on Marxism and philosophy in the Jewish—Russian Voskhod; and contributed also to
Sozialistische Monatshefte (Socialist Monthly) and
Deutsche Worte (German Words). In 1896, he organized the Group of Jewish Socialists Abroad, the purpose of which was to prepare revolutionary propaganda literature in Yiddish, with the
Communist Manifesto as a beginning. For this revolutionary library, Zhitlowsky wrote an introduction entitled
Yiddish—Why?. The
Bund which published the booklet thought that Zhitlowsky's introduction was not sufficiently revolutionary and too nationalistic, because the author expressed the belief that the rebirth of the Yiddish language and literature would lead to the national and social awakening of the Jewish people. Zhitlowsky attended the
First Zionist Congress meeting at
Basel in 1897. He was against founding a Zionist party, and believed in the necessity for a League for Jewish Colonization, a league that would appeal to all those opposed to Herzel's political Zionism. A day after the Congress, Zhitlowsky addressed the delegates and guests on Yiddish and the purposes of the Yiddish publishing house Zeit Geist, which had been founded by a group of Jewish intellectuals and revolutionaries. In this speech were first laid the foundations of
Yiddishism, which subsequently became deeply rooted in Eastern Europe and America. He came into close relations with the Bund which published his pamphlet
Zionism or Socialism? in 1898. Zhitlowsky spent 1907 in Finland. With the aid of
Gregory Gershuni, he engaged in a strong Socialist Revolutionary propaganda. He called a congress of socialist factions which leaned more closely to the Socialist Revolutionary ideology. This congress adopted several of his resolutions which increased the influence of the Sejmists (Parliamentarians). The Socialist Revolutionaries and the Sejmists sent him as their delegate to the International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart that year. Here he fought for the rights of these two parties in the International Socialist Bureau. In 1908 he was sent to America by the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Sejmists, settling in New York. With the help of the following he had attracted among the radical Jewish intellectuals during his previous visit, Zhitlowsky founded a publishing house that issued a new monthly,
Dos Naye Leben (The New Life). Under his editorship, the journal exercised great influence on Yiddish culture, including the development of free socialist thought, and became an organ of modern Yiddish literature; for the six years it existed (until 1914),
Dos Naye Leben was a spiritual home of many Jewish publicists and scientists. • two lectures on Science, Philosophy and Religion (published in 1931).
Death Zhitlowsky died in
Calgary, Canada, on May 6, 1943 while visiting on a lecture circuit. His funeral was held at the
Manhattan Center on 34th Street in
New York, NY. == Key achievements==