David Lvovich

LVOVICH, DAVID (known as Davidovich; 1882–1950), leader of the territorialist-Socialist movement and of *ORT. Born in southern Russia and brought up in an assimilationist environment, Lvovich first became acquainted with Jewish affairs and the Jewish workers' movement when he visited Minsk in 1903 and came into contact with the *Po'alei Zion. After he left Russia he maintained relations with the Ḥerut group founded by N. *Syrkin. In 1905 he visited Ereẓ Israel and on his return he abandoned general Zionism in favor of territorialism. After joining the *Zionist-Socialist Workers' Party (SS or ZS), he founded the SS League abroad and established student groups in Germany. A member of the party's committee in Odessa from late 1905, he was the leader of its *self-defense group during the October pogrom. At the SS convention in Leipzig (1906), he represented that trend which connected the future realization of territorialism with the unavoidable turn of the course of Jewish emigration from the towns toward agriculture and concentrated colonization. He later worked for an active policy in the organization and regulation of emigration. As the representative of the SS at the conventions of the Jewish Territorialist Organization (see *Territorialism) he was elected to the Angola Committee (Vienna, 1912). In 1907 he was the representative of the SS at the Socialist International Congress in Stuttgart. Lvovich tried to promote cooperation between SS, the *Jewish Socialist Workers' Party ("Sejmists"), and the Po'alei Zion. In 1917 he was elected to the Social-Revolutionary list by Jewish colonists of southern Ukraine as the only delegate of the *United Jewish Socialist Workers' Party at the constituent assembly. Turning his energies to working for ORT in Russia, he traveled abroad (1919) as its emissary, along with L. *Bramson, in order to establish the world ORT league (1921). Becoming a member of its executive council in 1937 he was elected vice president and in 1946 co-president. He published his memoirs in Sotsialistisher Teritorializm (1934), 79–89.

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