Jacob Lestschinsky

Jakob Lestschinsky (also Jacob Lestschinsky,Yankev Leshtshinski, לשצ'ינסקי, יעקב; born August 26, 1876 in Horodysche, Ukraine; died March 22, 1966 in Jerusalem) was a Jewish statistician and sociologist who wrote in Yiddish, German, and English. He specialized in Jewish demography and economic history.

Life

Born near Kiev, he received a traditional Jewish education. As a teenager, he was deeply moved by Hebrew writer Ahad Ha'am. After university study in Switzerland for a decade, he returned to Russia in 1913. He was involved in various Zionist and socialist political activities, such as the Zionist Socialist Workers Party.

After being imprisoned in the aftermath of the October Revolution, he left Russia in 1921 for Berlin. There he was a correspondent for the New York Yiddish daily Forverts, a role he continued for more than 40 years. He left Germany for Warsaw in 1934, emigrated to the United States in 1938, and finally to Israel in 1959.

YIVO

He was a founding member of YIVO (Institute for Jewish Research) in Vilna (then in Poland), starting its Section for Economics and Statistics. He also edited the Bleter far yidisher demografye, statistik, un ekonomik, which appeared in Berlin from 1923 until 1925, and the Economic-Statistical Section publications Ekonomishe shriftn and Yidishe ekonomik.

Selected Works

• Yidishe Folk in Tsifern (1922)
• Jüdische Bevölkerungsbewegung (1926)
• "Die Umsiedlung und Umschichtung des jüdischen Volkes im Laufe des letzten Jahrhunderts" (1929), Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, 30: 123-156
• Di Yidishe Katastrofe (1944)
• Crisis, Catastrophe, and Survival: A Jewish Balance Sheet, 1914–1948 (1948)