Tag Archives: Mizrachi Movement

Jews of the Week: Mohilever, Pinsker, and Lilienblum

Hovevei Zion, The “Lovers of Zion”

Moses Lilienblum

Shmuel Mohilever (1824-1898) was born in what is today Belarus to a deeply religious family. He studied at the famed Volozhin Yeshiva and became a rabbi. Violent pogroms against Jews in Russia in 1881, followed by the antisemitic May Laws of 1882, convinced Rabbi Mohilever that Jews would never be safe in the diaspora and must return to their ancestral home. In 1882, he took a trip to Paris to meet with Edmond James de Rothschild and convinced him to fund Jewish settlements in the Holy Land. While chief rabbi of the town of Bialystok, Rabbi Mohilever would inspire Jews in his community to make aliyah. In 1884, he joined a group of leaders in Katowice (then in Prussia, today in Poland) to formally establish Hovevei Zion, the “Lovers of Zion”, into an organized movement. At the meeting, he was elected president while Leon Yehuda Leib Pinsker (1821-1891) was elected secretary. Pinsker was born to a secular Russian-Jewish family in what is today Poland. He was one of the first Jews to attend Odessa University to study law. However, restrictions on Jews becoming lawyers made him switch to medicine and Pinsker became a physician. At first, Pinsker believed Jews must assimilate into European society and that this would end antisemitism. He soon saw that this was not working at all, and concluded that antisemitism is a misnomer; the proper term should be “Judeophobia”, since fear and hatred of Jews is irrational, deep-seated, and essentially incurable. He started writing articles to convince Jews to move to their homeland, since everywhere else they would inevitably be hated. He worked closely with Moshe Leib Lilienblum (1843-1910) who, like Rabbi Mohilever, was born to a deeply religious Russian-Jewish family. Lilienblum was a noted Jewish scholar from a young age, and soon founded and headed a yeshiva in Vilnius. With time, however, he saw that poverty and persecution in exile was destroying his people. He became a committed Zionist, recognizing that the only solution for the Jewish people is to return to Israel and establish their own independent state. Lilienblum wrote a great deal of early Zionist literature. When Rabbi Mohilever distanced himself from Hovevei Zion because it was becoming too secular, Lilienblum took over as president. Hovevei Zion went on to convince countless Jews around the world to take up the Zionist call, and founded the cities of Rishon LeZion, Hadera, and Rehovot in Israel. Rabbi Mohilever, meanwhile, set the stage for the Mizrachi religious Zionist movement. He made sure that Jewish settlement in Israel conformed to Jewish law. The town and kibbutz of Gan Shmuel in Israel was founded in his honour in 1895.

Photo from the 1884 Katowice Conference, with Rabbi Mohilever and Leo Pinsker seated at centre.

Video: The Hidden History of Zionism

Words of the Week

To the living, the Jew is a corpse; to the native, a foreigner; to the homesteader, a vagrant; to the proprietary, a beggar; to the poor, an exploiter and a millionaire; to the patriot, a man without a country; for all, a hated rival.
– Leon Pinsker

Jew of the Week: Meir Bar-Ilan

A Religious Zionist Pioneer

Meir Berlin (1880-1949) was born in Volozhin, near modern-day Minsk, Belarus. He was the youngest son of the “Netziv”, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, one of the greatest rabbis of the generation and head of the illustrious Volozhin Yeshiva. Young Meir studied at his father’s yeshiva, as well as other prestigious academies like Brisk and Telshe. He received his rabbinic ordination at the age of 22, then headed to the University of Berlin for secular studies. It is there that he became a staunch Zionist, and in 1905 joined the Mizrachi movement of religious Zionists (founded by Rabbi Yitzchak Yaakov Reines). Berlin represented Mizrachi at the Seventh Zionist Congress where he voted against the Uganda Proposal (creating a Jewish state in Uganda instead of the Holy Land). In 1911, he founded a religious Zionist newspaper, HaIvri, which would go on to feature great writers and thinkers like S.Y. Agnon and Eliezer Ben-Yehuda. Berlin moved to New York a few years later to establish and develop the American branch of the Mizrachi movement. In a short period of time, it grew to over 100 chapters. He served as president of Yeshiva University between 1920 and 1922. The following year, he finally fulfilled his dream of making aliyah and settled in Jerusalem. As did many others, Berlin would later Hebraize his last name to “Bar-Ilan”. Meanwhile, he founded a new newspaper, HaTzofeh, and started work on the Talmudical Encyclopedia (which would eventually be a massive 42-volume series). Bar-Ilan served on the boards of Mizrachi Bank and the Jewish National Fund. When the British limited Jewish immigration to the Holy Land, Bar-Ilan became their vocal opponent and began a campaign of peaceful protest and civil disobedience. In 1943, he went on a trip around the world to build support for establishing a Jewish state and met with numerous political leaders. He also criticized the American government for staying silent and doing little about the atrocities happening in Europe, and campaigned for more assistance to Jewish refugees. When the State of Israel was finally born, Rabbi Bar-Ilan presided over a committee to discuss how Jewish law can continue to be observed properly in the new country. He also championed the establishment of a university that would combine rigorous religious education with advanced secular studies and professional training. Though he did not live to see it, such a university did open its doors in Tel-Aviv in 1955, and was named after him: Bar-Ilan University. Today, Bar-Ilan University is Israel’s second-largest educational facility, with over 20,000 students. Moshav Beit Meir and the Meir Hills in Israel are named after Rabbi Bar-Ilan, too, along with numerous other streets, neighbourhoods, and schools.

Happy Jerusalem Day!

Bar-Ilan: Forgotten Pioneer of Jewish Activism

The Zohar Prophecy of the Six-Day War

Words of the Week

If horses were being slaughtered as are the Jews of Poland, there would by now be a loud demand for organized action against such cruelty to animals. Somehow, when it concerns Jews, everybody remains silent, including the intellectuals and humanitarians of free and enlightened America.
– Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan

Jew of the Week: Rabbi Yitzchak Yaacov Reines

Father of Religious Zionism

Yitzchak Yaacov Reines (1839-1915) was born near what is now Pinsk, Belarus to a long line of rabbis. He studied at the famous Volozhin Yeshiva where he received his rabbinic ordination in 1867. Rabbi Reines became the rabbi of the town of Svintsyan, Lithuania, just north of Vilnius. There, he opened his own yeshiva which, for the first time, included a secular studies curriculum as well. In 1882, a large assembly of rabbis gathered in St. Petersburg to discuss easing the plight of Russian Jewry, then suffering immense persecution and poverty. Reines proposed spreading his successful yeshiva model across Russia, allowing Jews to integrate into mainstream society (and economy) without abandoning their faith and traditions. The assembly rejected his plan, so Reines continued his mission on his own. His Svintsyan Yeshiva created a ten-year program that would give students both rabbinic ordination and a government-approved job. Unfortunately, the yeshiva faced too much opposition and shut down after four years. Meanwhile, Rabbi Reines was an active member of Hovevei Zion. In 1893, together with Rabbi Shmuel Mohilever, he proposed that Jews settle in their ancestral Holy Land and organize a mercaz ruhani, “spiritual centre”, that would combine Torah with good-old-fashioned agricultural labour. In 1899, Reines participated in the Third Zionist Congress, following which he kept a regular correspondence with Theodor Herzl. Rabbi Reines worked tirelessly to get more approval and understanding for the Zionist movement among traditional and Ultra-Orthodox Jews. In 1901, he built on his earlier mercaz ruhani model to start a new “religious Zionist” movement, known as Mizrachi. That same year, at the Fifth Zionist Congress, Reines played an instrumental role in preventing Zionism from becoming entirely secular and anti-religious (stopping the radical “Swiss faction” behind it). In 1902, Rabbi Reines published A New Light on Zion, a book that addressed the concerns that Ultra-Orthodox Jews had with Zionism. In it, he debunked many of the myths surrounding Zionism, and also composed a manual for establishing a model Jewish state in Israel that would be both materially and spiritually prosperous. Rabbi Reines assembled a large gathering of rabbis in Vilnius in 1902 to officially launch the religious Zionist movement. It would later gave birth to Israel’s first religious political party, the Mizrachi Party, which established Israel’s Ministry of Religious Affairs, and made sure that the Israeli government would adhere to Sabbath and kashrut observance. Mizrachi also built Israel’s first network of religious schools (which are Zionist and encourage students to serve in the IDF). The youth movement of Mizrachi, called Bnei Akiva, is the largest Jewish youth organization in the world (with 125,000 members in 42 countries) and operates religious Zionist schools around the globe. In 1905, Rabbi Reines resurrected his old vision and opened a new yeshiva in Lida, near Minsk, Belarus, which integrated religious and secular studies. Rabbi Reines also came up with a new Talmud-study system, wrote a commentary on the Midrash, and published a number of other acclaimed books. Today, the religious Zionist movement that he founded remains one of the largest and most influential in Israel. Rabbi Reines’ yahrzeit is this Sunday.

Words of the Week

I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.
– John Adams, second president of the United States