Paperin, L.: An Expedition to Cyrenaica. 1908. A Report

Title

Ekspeditsiia v Kirenaiku. 1908. Otchet, Kiev 1909

An Expedition to Cyrenaica. 1908. A Report

Keywords

Summary

Full title: Report of the work of the expedition sent to Сyrenaica by the Jewish Territorialist Organization under the patronage of the governor-general of Tripoli and under the direction of J.W. Gregory, Professor of Geology at Glasgow University, for the exploration of the country in view of a possible Jewish colonisation. Translated from English by L. Paperin. The book includes a historical and political introduction on Cyrenaica by Israel Zangwill, President of the Jewish Territorialist Organization (JTO), with an appendix: a map showing the geographical position of Cyrenaica. The introduction is followed by a general report on the 1908 expedition to Cyrenaica, a report on the agricultural conditions of Cyrenaica, a report on water supply and technical issues, a chapter devoted to the hygienic conditions of Cyrenaica and its relevance for Jewish colonisation from the point of view of national health. The book also includes a historical addendum devoted to the life of Jewish settlements in ancient Cyrenaica.

Bio

Léon (Leib) Paperin was a scholar, journalist, and translator who worked in Ukraine and France. One of the promoters of the Jewish Zionist movement, he was a member of the Jewish Territorial Organisation. In 1899 Paperin became one of the founding editors, along with Abraham Rokéach, of the newspaper “L’Écho Sioniste”, which was intended to replace the short-lived publication “Kadimah”. “L’Écho Sioniste” ceased to exist in 1905. In 1906-1907 Paperin edited the periodical “Evreiskii golos” [Jewish Voice] in Odessa. Following the publication of Gershon-ben-Gershon’s The Zionist Movement Among the Jews (1900), Paperin replied with an essay entitled Something About Political Zionism (1900) where he criticised Gershon’s interpretation of Theodor Herzl’s work The Jewish State. In 1905 he edited and translated in Russian Herzl’s Collected Speeches and Articles on Zionism. He also authored twenty-one entries in the Brockhaus and Efron Jewish Encyclopaedia (1906-1913), including the articles devoted to Alexandre Dumas fils and Voltaire.

Sources

L. Paperin, Impressions de Bale, “L’Écho sioniste”, 05.09.1899, p. 7-8;

L. Paperin, Koe-chto o politicheskom sionizme: (Po povodu brosh. g. Gershon-ben-Gershona: “Sionistskoe dvizhenie sredi evreev”), Khar’kov 1900;

D. Shevelev, Obzor russkoi dorevoliutsionnoi istoriografii istorii sionizma, in Rossiiskii sionizm: istoriia i kul’tura: materialy nauchnoi konferentsii, ed. by O. Budnitskii, Moskva 2002, p. 198-214;

V. Zhabotinskii, Sionizm i kommunism. Kritiki sionizma, in O zheleznoi stene: rechi, stat’i, vospominaniia, ed. by F. Dektor, Minsk 2004, p. 161-186;

V. Vilmain, Lire un journal “non lu”, l’exemple de L’Écho Sioniste (1899-1905), in L’Histoire et la Presse, ed. by S. Laithier, V. Vilmain, Paris 2007, p. 21-34;

G. Bernier, Témoignages sur Léo Glaeser, Strasbourg 2015, p. 24-25.

A.F., M.E.

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