WILENSKY, YEHUDAH LEIB NISAN

WILENSKY, YEHUDAH LEIB NISAN (1870–1935), Zionist leader. He was born in Chechersk, Belorussia. In 1891, while a student in Berlin, he joined the Benei Moshe Society and the Russian-Jewish Scientific Society. He was a delegate to the First Zionist Congress and attended all subsequent congresses until his death. Responding to Theodor Herzl's call for the "conquest of the communities," he gave up his profession as chemist and became government-appointed rabbi of the Nikolayev community from 1903 to 1906. He democratized the life of the community, introduced modern Hebrew education, and promoted Jewish *self-defense against pogroms. His activities on behalf of an investigation into the role played by the authorities in the pogrom that took place in Nikolayev in October 1905 led to his arrest and expulsion from Russia. For the next five years, Wilensky lived in Berlin, where he was on the staff of the Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden and utilized his position to further understanding between German and East European Jewries. In 1911 he returned to Russia and, after the 1917 Revolution, was elected chairman of the Kharkov Jewish community. In 1919 he led a Jewish delegation that met with the "White" Army general Anton *Denikin to urge the cessation of pogroms by his troops. When the Red Army took over southern Russia, Wilensky had to flee the country by way of the Caucasian border, reaching Palestine in 1920. During the period 1921–32 he served as a Keren Hayesod emissary in Europe and South America (Chile made him its honorary consul in Jerusalem) and was particularly successful in propagating Zionism in Romania. His memoirs and letters, together with a monograph about him written by his daughter Miriam *Yalan-Stekelis, were published in 1968.

bibliography:

M. Yalan-Stekelis, in: He-Avar, 13 (1966), 134–49.

[Yehuda Slutsky]