Scholar, Zionist, and Man of Letters: Reuven Fahn (1878–1939/1944) in the Karaite Community of Halicz

Reuven Fahn (1878–1939/1944), was a self-made historian, ethnographer, epigraphist, poet, writer, journalist, and ardent Zionist of Galician origin. Already in his youth he could speak and write literary Hebrew, German, Yiddish, and apparently, Polish and Ruthenian (Ukrainian). He published his first journalist report in Hebrew in the periodical “Ha-Magid” in 1893. At the age of 16 he published a poem entitled Beit Yisra’el. In 1897 he moved to Halicz which was at that time a shtetl with significant Rabbanite and Karaite community. Fahn left ca. 14 separate monographs and brochures, and more than 200 articles and reports in Hebrew, Yiddish, and German. These publications included journalist reports, travel notes, poems, short stories, legends, feuilletons, and scholarly essays. The importance of Fahn’s scholarly publications on the Karaites is also strengthened by the fact that many of the sources used by him (e.g. tombstone inscriptions, manuscripts, and architectural monuments) were later lost or destroyed. Fahn’s belletrist publications attracted much attention and criticism on the part of Jewish litterateurs such as Samuel Agnon, Joseph Brenner, or Gershom Bader. The aim of this paper is to analyse Reuven Fahn’s publications dedicated to the Karaite community of Halicz and to remind scholarly public about the importance of the contribution of Reuven Fahn to the field of Jewish studies and Hebrew literature. Readers can also find interesting information on the contacts between Fahn and important 20th–century Jewish figures such as Samuel Agnon, Majer Bałaban, Sholem Asch, Samuel Poznański and others.