Chaim Zhitlowsky (Yiddish: חײם זשיטלאָװסקי; Russian: Хаим Осипович Житловский) (April 19, 1865 – May 6, 1943) was a Jewish socialist, philosopher, social and political thinker, writer and literary critic born in Ushachy, Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Usachy Raion, Vitebsk Region, Belarus).

He was a founding member of the Union of Russian Socialist Revolutionaries;[1] a founding member and theoretician of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in Russia,[2] and a key promoter of Yiddishism and Jewish Diaspora nationalism, which influenced the Jewish territorialist and nationalist movements.

"[3] Chaim Zhitlowsky was born in 1865, in the small town of Ushachy, in the province of Vitebsk Governorate, the Russian Empire.

During this period he made his first foray into literature: translating the Yiddish version of Uncle Tom's Cabin into Hebrew.

On his 13th birthday (his bar-mitzvah) Chaim made the acquaintance of Shloyme Rappaport, who was later to become S. Ansky, the famous author of The Dybuk.

His first work, a treatise in Russian entitled Thought of the Historical Fate of the Jewish People was published in Moscow in 1887 when he was twenty-two.

The liberal Russian press enthusiastically greeted and responded warmly to his ideas, but was met with scant favour among Jewish critics, because it contained no solution to the problems it treated.

Zhitlowsky returned to Vitebsk for a short time, from there he went to Galicia, where it was much easier to preach Socialist doctrines among the Jewish masses.

In his first socialist pamphlet on a Jewish theme, he demanded national as well as civil equality for Jews, articulating his ideas on Judaism in Europe.

In 1898 the Verband published Zhitlowsky's theoretical work, Socialism and the Fight for Political Freedom, written under the pen name Gregorovich.

From time to time, he contributed to several well-known Russian magazines, such as Russkoye Bogastvo (Russian Wealth); articles on Marxism and philosophy in the Jewish—Russian Voskhod; and contributed also to Sozialistische Monatshefte (Socialist Monthly) and Deutsche Worte (German Words).

In 1896, he organized the Group of Jewish Socialists Abroad, the purpose of which was to prepare revolutionary propaganda literature in Yiddish, with the Communist Manifesto as a beginning.

The Bund which published the booklet[8] thought that Zhitlowsky's introduction was not sufficiently revolutionary and too nationalistic, because the author expressed the belief that the rebirth of the Yiddish language and literature would lead to the national and social awakening of the Jewish people.

[6][5] In 1900, Zhitlowsky and John Edelheim founded the Deutscher Academischer Soziale Wissenschafte (German Academy of Social Science).

He toured important European centres, making connections with revolutionary leaders of England, France, and Germany.

When Zhitlowsky in a series of lectures pointed out that there was no contradiction between progressive nationalism and the socialist ideal, he encountered strong opposition.

With the help of the following he had attracted among the radical Jewish intellectuals during his previous visit, Zhitlowsky founded a publishing house that issued a new monthly, Dos Naye Leben (The New Life).

Under his editorship, the journal exercised great influence on Yiddish culture, including the development of free socialist thought, and became an organ of modern Yiddish literature; for the six years it existed (until 1914), Dos Naye Leben was a spiritual home of many Jewish publicists and scientists.

Under the leadership of its originators, Zhitlowsky, J. L. Perez and Nathan Birnbaum, the Conference for the first time declared Yiddish to be "a national language of the Jewish people."

[6] In 1909 Zhitlowsky raised (in his magazine Dos Naye Leben) the question of founding Yiddish secular schools in America.

In 1910 at the Convention of the Poale Zion Party in Montreal, Canada, that matter was placed by him on the order of the day, and there and then the inauguration of this type of school was proclaimed.

In 1913 publication of Dos Naye Leben ceased, and Zhitlowsky made a lecture tour of Jewish student colonies of the important academic centers in France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

In 1923, when the magazine was discontinued, Zhitlowsky returned to Europe to complete The Spiritual Struggle of the Jewish People for Freedom.

A Zhitlowsky memorial volume was published in Berlin containing articles and reminiscences of his intimate friends and disciples.

[6] In his monograph, Zhitlowsky; His Life and Work, Shmuel Niger made the following summary of Zhitlowsky's achievements:[12][13] In the world of universal ideas: In the Jewish world: This is a short summary of over a half of century of scientific, literary, journalistic work, and activity as a lecturer and publisher, all in the spirit of socialism and progressive nationalism among the Jewish masses in America and abroad.

In Yidn un Yiddishkayt (Jews and Jewishness, 1924), he sought to define the secular essence of Yiddishkeit, this time by calling forth the notions of racial contemporary theories.