Karaczewski, Ḥanina
KARACZEWSKI, ḤANINA
KARACZEWSKI, ḤANINA (1877–1926), music teacher and composer. Born in Petrovka, Bessarabia, he went in 1899 to Warsaw where for a time he conducted a military band. In 1908 he went to Palestine and taught music at various schools in Tel Aviv, chiefly at the Herzlia Gymnasium where he remained for 18 years. Here he instituted a choir and an orchestra. Many of his pupils became music educators and choral conductors. He also organized an adult choir of 200 voices whose most memorable appearance was at the cornerstone-laying ceremony of the Hebrew University in 1925. Karaczewski and A.Z. *Idelsohn were considered the "music teachers of the National Renaissance." Only a few of Karaczewski's songs and arrangements were published during his lifetime, but a collection of his works, Ẓelilei Ḥanina (1927), appeared after his death. Three of his songs entered the permanent "corpus" of Palestinian-Israel folk songs: the song for Lag ba-Omer, Ha-Ya'arah be-Keshet va-Ḥeẓ ("To the Forest with Bow and Arrow"), with words by Samuel Leib *Gordon; El Rosh ha-Har ("To the Peak of the Mountain"), with words by Levin *Kipnis; and one of the most beautiful songs inspired by Lake Kinneret, Al Sefat Yam Kinneret ("On the Shore of Lake Kinneret"), with words by Jacob *Fichmann.
bibliography:
Ha-Gimnasyah ha-Ivrit Herẓiliyyah Zekher la-Ḥaver… Ḥanina Karaczewski (1927).
[Bathja Bayer]