Background
Lipsky, Louis was born on November 30, 1876 in Rochester, New York, United States. Son of Jacob and Dinah R. (Philipowsky) Lipsky.
Lipsky, Louis was born on November 30, 1876 in Rochester, New York, United States. Son of Jacob and Dinah R. (Philipowsky) Lipsky.
Student Rochester Free Academy and 1 year at Columbia.
Lipsky began his career as a reporter in Rochester, New York eventually moving to New York City where he joined the staff of the New York Morning Telegraph as a reporter covering theater news and serving as a drama critic. Lipsky was the editor of the magazine, The American Hebrew, from 1900 to 1914. He left the magazine to become secretary of the Federation of American Zionists, the organization that would become the ZOA, and in that capacity edited the first Zionist publication in English, The Maccabean.
He was Chairman of the ZOA from 1922 to 1930 and served as its President from 1926 to 1930.
The ascension of Lipsky to Chairman and President of the ZOA was part of a power struggle against the leadership of Louis Brandeis over issues of structural organization and financial planning and came about largely due to the influence and support of Chaim Weizmann who preferred Lipsky"s candidacy. He also published Gallery of Zionist Profiles (1956), an early history of the Zionist Movement told through profiles of its leaders and thinkers, and Tales of the Yiddish Rialto: Reminiscences of Playwrights and Players in New York"s Jewish Theatre (1962).
Lipsky"s sons were the novelist Eleazar Lipsky and the historian Joel Carmichael. His great-granddaughter is the filmmaker Emily Carmichael.
Deborah Lipstadt, The Zionist of Louis Lipsky, 1900-1921.
Arno Press, Series Dissertations in American Biography, New York 1982.
The "Lipsky" and "Brandeis" factions of Zionism were reconciled in 1930 when an eighteen member administrative council, split equally between their respective supporters, was elected to govern the ZOA. Lipsky"s first collection of essays on Zionism was published in 1927 as The Selected Works of Louis Lipsky and reprinted in 1977 as Thirty Years of American Zionism and Rainbows.
Member Society of Genesee.
Married Charlotte Schacht, March 20, 1907. Children: David, Eleazar, Joel.