HE-ḤAVER

HE-ḤAVER, Zionist student organization established in 1912. Its membership consisted mainly of Zionist students from Russia who were attending universities in Western Europe, and the organization engaged in Zionist propaganda and led the struggle against assimilationist Jewish students. In Russia itself underground branches of He-Ḥaver existed in various cities, and upper classmen of the high schools also participated in them. In April 1917, when He-Ḥaver had a total of 100 branches, it held its first open conference in Petrograd, but after the October Revolution it had to revert to clandestine activity. The organization had its own organs: the Russian-language Yevreyskiy student ("Jewish Student") which appeared in Berlin from 1912 to 1914, in Petrograd from 1915 to 1918, and in Moscow in 1922 and 1923; and the Hebrew-language He-Ḥaver, of which two issues appeared in 1914. It sought to spread the knowledge of Hebrew, Jewish history, and of Ereẓ Israel among its members. In March 1924 the organization merged with the Zionist Students' Organization in the Ukraine and Kadimah in Belorussia to form the United Federation of Zionist Youth in Russia (or EVOSM, the initials of its name in Russian). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. Refaeli, Pa'amei ha-Ge'ullah (1951), 194–5, 198–200; idem, Ba-Ma'avak li-Ge'ullah (1956), 25, 89–92, 142. (Yehuda Slutsky)