Over five hundred prominent Jews attended a dinner given here this evening in honour of the Rev. Zvi Hirsh Masliansky, the famous Yiddish and Hebrew orator and Zionist propagandist, on the occasion of his 75th. birthday. Among the telegrams of congratulation received at the dinner was one from Dr. Weizmann, who was a pupil of the Rev. Masliansky. Other telegrams of congratulation were received from Mr. Felix M. Warburg, and Dr. Cyrus Adler.
Rev. Masliansky is one of the veterans of the Zionist movement. He was an early Hovevei Zionist, who belonged in Odessa to the group which included Achad Ha’am, Leo Pinsker and Lilienblum. He went to England in 1894 and about two years after settled in America, where he became the most popular Yiddish and Hebrew speaker. He has published two volumes of his sermons, and in 1924 he published his memoirs.
The Zionist movement owes a deep-debt of gnatitude to Masliansky for his untiring labours on its behalf, for the many converts that he made in the early years of the movement, for the numerous organisations that he established in many centres and for his loyalty and devotion to the cause until the present day, one of the American Jewish papers wrote recently, referring to the coming anniversary.
Masliansky’s fame, it said, rests primarily on the new use that he made of the God-given gift of oratory with which he was blessed. Russian Jewry produced several great preachers during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as the Dubnov Maggid, the Maggid of Chelm, the Maggid of Rumshishok, and the Maggid of Kamenetz. Masliansky appeals to his hearers from the point of view of Jewish nationalism and endeavours to stimulate the sentiment of loyalty and attachment to the traditions of the past as they may be made into realities for the life of the future. With his unusual fluency of speech, with his marvellous gift of imagery and with his extensive knowledge and familiarity with the Bible and Jewish literature, he is able to stir the people to the every depths of feeling and arouse their enthusiasm to the highest pitch. He preached for many years in the Educational Alliance in New York every Friday night and always drew large congregations that crowded the hall of that institution. With the aid of a number of Jewish leaders in New York, headed by the late Louis Marshall, Masliansky also edited a Yiddish daily, “The Jewish World”, with a very excellent English page, edited by Mr. Herman Bernstein, but this venture lasted only a few years. His association with the Zionist organisation and with many other movements in Jewish life has been intimate and continuous to the present day.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
