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Haan, Jacob Israël de, 1881-1924We have 1 book for this author.
Jacob Israël de Haan (31 December 1881 – 30 June 1924) was a Dutch Jewish lawyer, legal scholar, diplomat, journalist and poet. He was assassinated by the Haganah on July 1, 1924, allegedly for his political stance, although there may have been additional factors stemming from strong feuds with others. ![Portrait of Jacob Israël de Haan (1881-1924) (with permission of [1])](/images/4918/180px-De_Haan_portrait.gif)
 Early lifeDe Haan was born in Smilde, a village in the northern Dutch province of Drenthe, and grew up in Zaandam. He was one of eighteen children and received a traditional Jewish education. His father, Yitzchak HaLevi de Haan, was a hazzan (synagogal cantor) and Shochet (ritual slaughterer). One of his sisters, Carry (January 1, 1881-November 16, 1932), was also an important Dutch author, usually writing under the pseudonym Carry van Bruggen. De Haan worked as a teacher after obtaining a degree, and studied law between 1903 and 1909. He wrote in socialist publications during these years. He was a friend of Frederik van Eeden and Arnold Aletrino, both Tachtigers authors and both medical men. He initially lived in Amsterdam, where he composed the controversial novel Pijpelijntjes (1904, "Lines from De Pijp", named after the then-new neighbourhood De Pijp), which featured homo-eroticism, quite shocking for the beginning of the 20th century. The book stirred up a controversy and led to his dismissal from his teaching job and also from the social-democratic circles. In 1907 he married the medical doctor Johanna van Maarseveen, but this marriage is likely to have been platonic; they separated in 1919, although they never officially divorced. A second controversial novel, Pathologieën (1908, "Pathologies") described the sorrows and joys of a sadomasochistical relationship. However, this book went largely unnoticed, as did De Haan's decadent prose sketches. Some fame he acquired as a poet, by publishing five volumes of poems between 1914 and 1921. Interest in Judaism and his departure for JerusalemAround 1910, De Haan developed an interest in Judaism, the Land of Israel and Zionism. This seems to have begun as a result of the mass imprisonment of Jews in Tsarist Russia, suspected of Bolshevism, and his work to free them. According to historical records, de Haan went to Russia armed with a letter of recommendation from the Queen of the Netherlands and was able to negotiate leniency for his Jewish clients. His work for Russian Jews lasted two years and made him keenly aware of the evils of anti-Semitism. Prior to his departure for Palestine de Haan is described as being:
Interest in Zionism and JudaismHe rapidly became more religiously committed. He wrote extensively on the subject of Israel and Zionism even before he moved there in 1919, when he settled in Jerusalem, teaching at a new law school and sending articles to the Algemeen Handelsblad ("General Trade Journal"), one of the most important Dutch daily newspapers, and the De Groene Amsterdammer ("The Green Amsterdam Weekly"), a liberal weekly. He was initially involved with the Religious Zionist Mizrachi movement and then, after meeting with Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld (1849-1933) the leader of the Haredi Jews, he began to side with the Haredi groups in Jerusalem, for whom he became a political spokesman, remaining especially close with the leader of the Haredim Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld who allowed him to conduct negotiations with groups outside of the strictly Orthodox camp. De Haan was elected political secretary of the Orthodox community council (Vaad Ha'ir). He was adept at high level diplomacy that would have enabled the Haredim of the old Yishuv to establish their own direct link with leading officials. He sought a negotiated end to the struggle between Jews and Arabs and not one based on war and conflict, a view that was not seen with favor by all secular Zionist leaders at the time. (Sonnenfeld & Danziger) During this time, he continued to have relationships with men, mostly Arab youngsters from east Jerusalem. He wrote about his experiences in his poetry book, called "Kwatrijnen" (= Quatrains), published posthumously in the Amsterdam in 1924. In these poems he explicitly exposed his tendencies such as:
Targeted for assassinationHis assassination by the Haganah on July 1, 1924, allegedly for his political stance has been well researched and reported in the book De Haan: The first political assassination in Palestine written by Shlomo Nakdimon and Shaul Mayzlish (Hebrew edition. Modan Press, Tel Aviv, 1985) [1]. Nakdimon and Mayzlish conducted an in-depth investigation and their findings caused an upsurge of interest in the mysterious death of de Haan in Israel following their book's publication in 1985. 
They were able to trace the assassin, then living in Hong Kong as a businessman, Avraham Tehomi (1903-1990). Tehomi was interviewed for Israeli TV by Nakdimon and openly stated: "I have done what the Haganah decided had to be done. And nothing was done without the order of Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (who later became the second president of Israel 1952-1963)...I have no regrets because he (de Haan) wanted to destroy our whole idea of Zionism." (Nakdimon) The secular Zionist establishment would not allow the established Haredi community in Israel to be represented in the powerful Jewish Agency in the 1920's. In response, the Haredim founded an Agudat Israel branch in Jerusalem to represent their interests during the British Mandate of Palestine. The leader of the Haredi Jews in Palestine at the time, Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld chose de Haan to organize and represent the Haredi position on a diplomatic level equal to that of the secular Zionists. When Lord Northcliffe, a leading British publisher, was about to visit the Middle East, de Haan went to Alexandria in Egypt to present the case of Palestine's Orthodox Jews to him, before he reached Palestine:
De Haan also opened negotiations with the Hashemite leader Hussein bin Ali for the recognition of a Jewish state and the establishment of an official Palestinian state in Jordan within a federation. These bold moves threatened and alarmed the secular Zionist leadership and were factors contributing to the decision to eliminate him from the scene. AftermathDe Haan's murder was the first political murder in the Jewish community in Palestine, and stirred a controversy. Although most of the Zionist community sympathized the act (as De Haan was undermining the struggle for establishing a Jewish state), there were critical newspaper articles condeming the murder. Labor movement publicist Moshe Beilinson wrote:
Author Arnold Zweig published a book in 1932 based on De Haan's life called "De Vriendt kehrt heim" (English title "De Vriendt Goes Home"). Israeli author Haim Beer's book "Notzot" (feathers) also has a character based on De Haan. In Haredi circles De Haan is considered to be a martyr, killed by secular Jews, while protecting the Jewish religion. During the 1980s, the Haredi community in Jerusalem tried to change the name of the Zupnik Garden to commemorate De Haan. Various Zionists have accused De Haan's of being homosexual. Although no evidence of this has surfaced, for many years they used this as a justification of his murder. Tehomi denied such allegations: "I neither heard nor knew about this... why is it someones business what he does at his home?". A line from De-Haan's poem "a poem for a young fisherman": "Such a limitless longing for friendship", is inscribed on one of the three sides of the Homomonument at Amsterdam. See also
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This biographical information was gathered from the Jacob_Israël_de_Haan page, courtesy of the Wikipedia project. BooksJerusalem |
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