Lazarus Aaronson

Lazarus Leonard Aaronson MBE (18 February 1895 – 9 December 1966), often published as L. Aaronson, was a British poet and a lecturer in economics. As a young man, he belonged to a group of Jewish friends who are today known as the Whitechapel Boys, many of whom later achieved fame as writers and artists. Though less radical in his use of language, he has been compared to his more renowned Whitechapel friend, Isaac Rosenberg, in terms of diction and verbal energy. Aaronson's poetry is characterised as more post-Georgian than modernistic, and reviewers have traced influences from both the English poet John Keats, and Hebrew poets such as Shaul Tchernichovsky and Zalman Shneur.

Aaronson lived most of his life in London and spent much of his working life as a lecturer in economics at the City of London College. In his twenties, he converted to Christianity and a large part of his poetry focused on his conversion and spiritual identity as a Jew and an Englishman. In total, he published three collections of poetry: Christ in the Synagogue (1930), Poems (1933), and The Homeward Journey and Other Poems (1946). Although he did not achieve widespread recognition, Aaronson gained a cult following of dedicated readers. Upon retiring from teaching, he moved to Harpenden, Hertfordshire, where he died from heart failure and coronary heart disease on 9 December 1966. His poetry was not widely publicised, and he left many unpublished poems at his death.

Aaronson was born on 18 February 1895 at 34 Great Pearl Street, Spitalfields in the East End of London to poor Orthodox Jewish parents who had immigrated from Vilna in the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe. His father was Louis Aaronson, a bootmaker, and his mother was Sarah Aaronson, née Kowalski. He attended Whitechapel City Boys' School and later received a scholarship to attend Hackney Downs grammar school.

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