Yehudah Katzenelson

Born in Chernigov, Russia, Yehudah Katzenelson studied at the Bobruisk yeshiva, where he became interested in the Haskalah. After studying at Russia’s state-supported Zhitomir seminary for modern rabbinic training, Katzenelson abandoned semitraditional studies for modern learning, studying medicine in St. Petersburg. Serving as an army doctor in the 1877 Russo-Turkish War, he then established a medical practice in St. Petersburg while also beginning a literary career in the small but burgeoning Russian-language Jewish press. Shocked by the 1881 pogrom wave, he reoriented much of his writing toward the expanding Hebrew press in the mid-1880s; it was in that context that he adopted his obscure pen name Buki ben Yogli, a biblical reference. He soon became known in Hebraist circles for his witty feuilletons and essays about agrarianism as a solution to the Russian Jewish problem. Uncertain about Zionism and Jewish nationalism, he embraced more fully the idea of Jewish agrarianism but wedded this view to growing territorialist leanings. Katzenelson played a leading role in the Russian Jewish OPE organization, which sought to modernize and integrate Jews into Russian civic culture through modern education. Never a central figure in Hebrew letters but omnipresent, he also helped run the Ḥoveve sfat ‘ever (Lovers of the Hebrew Language) organization, and wrote a Hebrew monograph about Pushkin as well as a text on medicine in Jewish antiquity that enriched Hebrew medical terminology. His posthumously published memoirs are his best-remembered work.