Louis Lipsky, president of the Zionist Organization of America, was the recipient of many congratulatory messages on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday which he celebrates today. Notwithstanding a special resolution adopted by the Zionist Convention in Buffalo urging the Executive Committee to arrange a public celebration will be held, at the express wish of Mr. Lipsky.
Mr. Lipsky’s association with the Zionist movement dates back to its inception in America more than a quarter of a century ago.
Mr. Lipsky’s first public position of note was as a writer and dramatic critic, but his literary duties were secondary to his Zionist work. Subsequently with the growth of the Zionist Organization, he gave up his literary career to devote himself entirely to Zionism, speaking, writing and organizing for the movement. The growing strength and prestige of the American Zionist movement brought Mr. Lipsky into prominence in the world councils of Zionist. Later, when the war threw the onus of Zionist achievement on America, he became one of the key figures in the tasks of the movement.
His services were recognized by the World Zionist Organization at the last two Zionist Congresses held in Carlsbad and in Vienna, where he was elected unanimously as a member of the Zionist Executive of London, which, including Dr. Chaim Weizmann President of the World Zionist Organization and Mr. Nahum Sokolow, Chairman of the Executive is limited to five members.
In the American Zionist Organization, Mr. Lipsky has been successively Secretary of the Federation, and Secretary for Organization and in 1922 at the Philadelphia Convention was elected Chairman of the Executive Committee. He was re-elected to this position at the Baltimore Convention in 1923 and at Pittsburgh in 1924, and at Washington in 1925. At the 1926 convention held in Buffalo he was elected President of the Zionist Organization of America, a position which had been vacant since 1921.
As a member of the World Executive, Mr. Lipsky has been entrusted with the task of regulating the organization of the world movement. His duties in this capacity have kept Mr. Lipsky in London for four months each year since 1923.
Louis Lipsky was born in Rochester, New York, November 30, 1876. His father, Jacob Lipsky and his mother, Dina came to Rochester in 1873, from Philipova, Poland. His father, who died in 1919, was a shochat, well versed in modern and ancient Hebrew literature.
Louis Lipsky received his Jewish education in the Chedar until he was fourteen. His secular education he obtained in the Rochester public and high schools. When he was fifteen, he became a cigar maker and worked at this trade for three or four years. In the meantime, he prepared himself for the study of law.
He studied at Columbia University. Later he became the editor of a publication, “The Shofar,” in Rochester, which lasted for thirteen weeks. In 1899, he was invited to become the managing editor of the American Hebrew. While he was with the American Hebrew, he also edited the English page of the “Jewish Daily Herald.”
He became secretary to the late Leon N. Levy, president of the Independent Order B’nai B’rith. He contributed articles to various publications. He was the first one to translate Judah Leib Peretz into English.
From his early youth, Louis Lipsky was interested in the theatre and contributed articles on the Yiddish and American drama to the English newspapers, including the New York Press, and the New York Morning Telegraph. He wrote fiction for the Associationed Sunday Magazine, the Reader Magazine and for over three years, without a single break, he contributed a weekly fiction story to the Sunday edition of the “Morning Telegraph.”
He is the author of a number of one act plays, some of them dealing with Jewish themes. He has written a book of sketches of Jewish life in America and two full length plays of modern American life.
His interest in Zionism dates from 1896. Accompanying Dr. Joseph H. Hertz, then of Syracuse, and now chief rabbi of England, Mr. Lipsky attended one of the first sessions of the Federation of American Zionists held in New York. His report of the Zionist convention in Philadelphia held in 1899, which appeared in the “American Hebrew” attracted the attention of Dr. Richard Gottheil, then president of the Federation of American Zionists, who invited him to assume the management of the “Maccabean,” the monthly magazine issued by the Federation. The first number of the “Maccabean” was edited by Mr. Lipsky, who remained with it off and on in a volunteer capacity until it was absorbed into the “New Palestine.”
Mr. Lipsky remained in the background of the Zionist movement, speaking, writing and acting as parliamentarian until 1919 when, together with Miss Szold and Professor Israel Friedlander, he was elected a member of the Administrative committee of the Zionist Federation. In 1912 he became the chairman of the Executive Committee. In 1914, at the invitation of Dr. Schmarya Levine, then a member of the World Zionist Executive, he left the “American Hebrew” to give all his time to Zionist work.
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.
