Morris Winchevsky

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An undated portrait of Morris Winchevsky

Morris Winchevsky (Leopold Benzion Novokhovitch, 1856-1932) was a prominent Jewish socialist leader in London, England and the United States in the late 1800s.

Born in Kovno, Poland in 1856, Winchevsky later moved to London where, already a well known socialist, he founded the Dos Poilishe Yidl (The Little Polish Jew), one of the first Yiddish daily socialist newspapers; and the Arbeter Fraynd, the first Yiddish-language anarchist newspaper. A "secular humanist" Jewish supplementary school in Toronto, Ontario was named after Winchevsky.

[edit] In the US

After immigrating to New York City, Winchevsky joined with Abraham Cahan and Louis Miller, to other prominent New York Jewish socialists, to found what would later become the largest Yiddish-language daily newspaper in the world, The Forward in 1897. This was the most visible method of defiance that the group displayed towards the otherwise dominant Deleonist dual unionism.

Winchevsky was later selected as the representative of the Jewish Socialist Federation to the American Jewish Congress when the AJC met to select its delegates to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. At the meeting of the Congress, Winchevsky was publicly censured by the JSF for expressing Zionist sentiments.

[edit] Poetry

Winchevsky is also well known for his role in the development of Yiddish poetry. Notably, he was a member of the Proletarian Poets. An association formed with Winchevsky, Morris Rosenfeld and David Edelstadt and Joseph Bovshover.