| Selig Schachnowitz | |
| Birth Date: | May 27, 1874 |
| Occupation: | Writer |
| Birth Place: | Jurbarkas, Vilna Governorate, Russian Empire |
| Spouse: | Zessi Löb |
| Children: | 1 |
| Death Place: | Zürich, Switzerland |
Selig Schachnowitz (May 27, 1874 – January 23, 1952) was a Russian-born Swiss-Jewish writer and publicist.
Schachnowitz was born in 1874 in Russian-controlled Lithuania under the Vilna Governorate to Isaak Schachnowitz and Lea Riszmann. He had a brother, Pinchas, who was also a writer but remained in Russia. He was trained as a teacher in Lithuania and received additional education in Frankfurt. From 1901 to 1908, he worked as a cantor at the synagogue in Endingen, Switzerland.[1] During a trip to Baden, Switzerland, he presented his first work, Chayim Moshiach, to a hotelier for examination, and had found it printed the next week in the Mainz Israelite.[2]
In 1908, he started as an editor at Der Israelit magazine in Frankfurt,[3] where he also worked as a teacher at Solomon Breuer's yeshiva.[4] He married Zessi Löb, and they had one daughter, Gertrud (1910–2007). After visiting Eretz Yisrael, he wrote Zwischen Ruinen und Aufbau in Erez-Israel in 1931. He emigrated to Switzerland in 1938 after Der Israelit closed due to sanctions by the Nazi Party.