Abraham Leib Zissu (first name also Avram, middle name also Leiba or Leibu; ; January 25, 1888 – September 6, 1956) was a Romanian writer, political essayist, industrialist, and spokesman of the Jewish Romanian community. Of modest social origin and a recipient of Hasidic education, he became a cultural activist, polemicist, and newspaper founder, remembered primarily for his Mântuirea daily. During the 1910s, he involved himself in the effort to unify and reactivate the local Zionist movement. By the end of World War I, Zissu also emerged as a theorist of Religious Zionism, preferring communitarianism and self-segregation to the assimilationist option, while also promoting literary modernism in his activity as novelist, dramatist, and cultural sponsor. He was the inspiration behind the Jewish Party, which competed with the mainstream Union of Romanian Jews (UER) for the Jewish vote. Zissu and UER leader Wilhelm Filderman had a lifelong disputation over religious and practical politics, which gave way to a mutual dislike punctuated by episodes of fraternization.
Always a confrontational critic of antisemitism, Zissu found himself marginalized by fascist regimes in the late 1930s and for most of World War II—though his calls for abolishing the rabbinate continued to be celebrated in Romania's right-wing circles. During the Holocaust, he risked his personal freedom to defend the interests of his community, and was especially vocal in antagonizing the collaborationist Central Jewish Office. He eventually reached a compromise with the Ion Antonescu regime when the latter curbed its deportations of Jews to Transnistria, and, after 1943, helped initiate the Aliyah Bet exodus of Romanian and Hungarian Jews to Mandatory Palestine. Such efforts required that he contact and build a working relationship with high-ranking officials of the regime, including Mihai Antonescu, Radu Lecca, and Pamfil Șeicaru. Though backed by the Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency and the World Jewish Congress, his contribution is at the center of an enduring controversy, focusing on his alleged favoritism of Zionist Jews and his cantankerousness. He had a reluctant collaboration with the more junior Zionist Mișu Benvenisti, who emerged as one of his key rivals.
In 1942, while held at Târgu Jiu internment camp, Zissu was co-opted by the Romanian resistance cells, and formed a political bond with Antonescu rival Nicolae Rădescu. Assisting M. H. Maxy of the Romanian Communist Party, he established links with the more mainstream National Peasants' Party. He and Maxy also formed a Jewish Democratic Front, holding seats on its Central Committee alongside Leon Ghelerter. From 1944, they helped finance the underground movement against Antonescu. As part of such organizational efforts, Zissu personally handled the accommodation of Jewish parachutists, including Shaike Dan Trachtenberg. He also persuaded the increasingly defeatist Romanian regime not to tolerate pogroms on its territory. Shortly after the Coup of August 1944, which restored democracy, Zissu's Zionism merged with explicit anti-communism, clashing directly with the Communist Party's anti-cosmopolitan agenda; he also found himself opposed to the mainstream groups in Romania and Palestine, criticizing Labor Zionism and celebrating Zionist political violence when used against British authorities.
The creation of a monopolistic Jewish Democratic Committee, led by Maxy and favored by Benvenisti, resulted in Zissu's near-complete marginalization in political life; friends quarreled with him when he publicized his anticlericalism, which specifically targeted Chief Rabbi Alexandru Șafran. In that context, Zissu veered toward a non-communist "Biblical socialism", which he envisaged as the doctrine of a new political group in Israel. After 1948, his renewed effort to ensure the mass emigration of Romanian Jews, and his contacts with Israeli government officials, made him a target for the communist regime. In 1951, he was arrested and tortured into confessing that he had spied for Israel; in 1954, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the crime of high treason. Zissu was granted amnesty after two years, having spent most of them in the notoriously harsh Pitești prison. Finally allowed to emigrate in July 1956, he died less than two months later in a Tel Aviv hospital. He left a corpus of works in various languages, including Hebrew, many of which survive as manuscripts.
Biography Zionist beginnings Early life and debut Abraham Leib was born into a Hasidic Jewish family in Piatra Neamț.Leon Volovici, Zissu, Abraham Leib, in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern EuropeCrăciun, p. 88 Christel Wollmann-Fiedler, "'Casa Zissu', o nestemată în brățara vilelor din Berlin-Grunewald – 1929", in Observator Cultural, Issue 930, July 2018 His surname was the Romanianized form of the given name "Züs",Alexander Avram, "Unconventional Surnames among Jews in the Areas of the Old Kingdom of Romania", in Ovidiu Felecan (ed.), Numele și numirea. Actele Conferinței Internaționale de Onomastică. Ediția a III-a: Conventional/Unconventional in Onomastics, p. 77. Cluj-Napoca: Editura Mega & Editura Argonaut, 2015. but is coincidentally spelled the same as an Aromanian name, also used in Romania, which signifies "living sibling".Dumitru Carabaș, "Elemente grecești în antroponimia aromânilor din România", in Studii și Cercetări de Onomastică și Lexicologie, Vol. 11, Issues 1–2, 2018, p. 58 His parents were Pincu Zissu, a bank accountant, and his wife Hinda-Lea; he had nine siblings.Ilie Rad, in Aurel Sasu (ed.), Dicționarul biografic al literaturii române, Vol. II, p. 877. Pitești: Editura Paralela 45, 2004. Teșu Solomovici, "A. L. Zissu — mare personalitate a evreimii române", in Realitatea Evreiască, Issues 416–417, November 2013, p. 11 The Zissus were traditionally involved in Jewish community life, with Pincu cited as an organizer of vigils held in Bârlad for the victims of the 1905 Kishinev pogrom."Manifestațiile din România", in Egalitatea, Issue 42/1905, pp. 343–344 Several sources describe Abraham as the brother-in-law of poet-journalist Tudor Arghezi and uncle of photographer Eleazar "Eli" Teodorescu, through his sister Constanța Zissu.Cernat, pp. 56, 275 However, more detailed accounts show Constanța as being born in Pitești to an unrelated Zissu family.C. Popescu-Cadem, Document în replică, pp. 223–225. Bucharest: Mihail Sadoveanu City Library, 2007. ; Pavel Țugui, "Un capitol din viața lui Tudor Arghezi (I)", in Steaua, Issue 12/1994, p. 12
Zissu held the belief that his birthplace was intimately connected with Hasidic history, proposing that parts of Ceahlău Massif, known as Valea Jidovului ("Jew's Valley"), were named for Baal Shem Tov.Daniel Dieaconu, "Mitologie românească în Munții Neamțului", in Lucrările simpozionului Ceahlău – natură, istorie și turism: ediția I, Durău, 2013, p. 89. Durău: Neamț County Council & Ceahlău Park Administration, 2013 He received a semi-formal Talmudic education, excelling in the study of both Hebrew and Yiddish sources; he may also have been well acquainted with the Kabbalah, which informed his later work as a novelist. At age twenty, he obtained a rabbi's diploma; although this was recognized by Casa Școalelor agency, he never practiced. At Piatra Neamț, the Zissu siblings had for a friend the younger Eugen Relgis, later a noted anarchist ideologue and writer of Jewish topics.Cernat, p. 56 Visiting Iași, Zissu formed a lasting bond with the Jewish intellectuals Elias and Moses Schwarzfeld, being introduced to their literary circle.Cărăbaș, p. 183
In December 1907, Zissu and D. Kahane represented Piatra at the 10th Zionist Conference, held in Galați. Here, he advocated for a "spiritual Zionism", which he viewed as more important than group organization.Benjamin et al., pp. 286, 313 Zissu had begun writing for the Iași-based Egalitatea magazine in 1904, aged sixteen, and did so until 1910. That year, he entered into conflict with the city's students, who were under the influence of antisemitic professor A. C. Cuza. Also in 1910, he was hired at Iași's Moldova Bank, where he led a workers' strike in 1914.Crăciun, pp. 88–89 He was also involved with the Jewish cultural movement in Iași, working alongside Samson Lazăr-Șaraga, Iacob Ashel Groper, and Jacob Itzhak Niemirower. Roxana Sorescu, "B. Fundoianu – anii de ucenicie" (I), in Observator Cultural, Issue 500, November 2009 In February 1912, he and I. Schoenberg represented Iași at the "30 Years of Zionism" celebration in Bucharest, where they met writer Nahum Sokolow.Benjamin et al., p. 319 Around that time, Zissu also met and befriended the painter Reuven Rubin, "a sort of disciple" of his who emigrated to France in 1923.Wexler & Popov, pp. 89, 97–98
Together with Petre Constantinescu-Iași, Zissu published the weekly literary magazine Floare Albastră ("Blue Flower"), which ran for six editions at Iași in 1912Crăciun, p. 89 and had the young poet Benjamin Fondane (of the Schwarzfeld family) among its noted contributors. The publication was mostly traditionalist and neo-romantic, opposed to both the Symbolist movement and the left-wing Viața Romînească.Iorga, pp. 36–38, 243 Zissu and most of the contributors, including Fondane and Sandu Teleajen, were pseudonymous; signed contributions included pieces by Ludovic Dauș, Enric Furtună, Constantin Motaș and Grigore T. Popa.Iorga, p. 243 In parallel, also in 1912, Zissu and Menahem Mendel Braunstein put out the Hebrew-language Ha-Mekits ("The Awakener"). He debuted as an author in 1914, with the play David Brandeis, and began writing for the Yiddish revival journal Likht ("Light"). In July 1913, Romania intervened in the Second Balkan War. As leaders of the Zionist Union of Iași, Zissu and Lazăr-Șaraga urged Romanian Jews to volunteer for service in the Land Forces, and thus to give proof of their "most profound patriotic sentiments"."Manifestațiile evreilor pământenĭ. Către zioniști ", in Universul, July 1, 1913, p. 3
First Mântuirea period The following period brought a decline in Zionist activities, which began as the Federal Committee of Galați went inactive. The Zionist Union of Iași participated in the Bucharest Zionist Conference of May 1915, which was called up by I. Herșcovici and his dissident lodge, Idealul.Benjamin et al., pp. 602–603 He, Lazăr-Șaraga, and the other Iași delegates asked for the Federal Committee to be deposed. When this proposal was vetoed, they still called on the Committee to immediately convene a meeting of the "regional conferences".Benjamin et al., p. 603 In November, Zissu himself was the Union's delegate to the Zionist Consultation, also held in Bucharest; while there, he participated in the creation of a Romanian-wide Propaganda Committee.Benjamin et al., pp. 336–338 Around that time, Zissu married the seven-years-younger Rachel Zimmer, daughter of oils trader Carol Zimmer, who was based in Bucharest.Kuller, p. 155 Their son Theodor (later Theodore) Zissu, himself a prominent Zionist, was born in 1916."Zissu, Theodore A. L.", in William D. Rubinstein, The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History, p. 1059. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. . See also Trașcă & Obiziuc, pp. 132–133 He was Abraham and Rachel's only child.