Menaḥem Ussishkin: Difference between revisions

== Biography ==

Menaḥem Ussishkin was born on the 1st of Elul, 5623 (August 14, 1863), to his father Moshe Zvi (a wealthy merchant, follower of Chabad) in the town of Dubrovna, in the Mogilev district of White Russia. The town was known for its tallit industry. From the age of four he studied in the ḥeder, and by the age of eight he had already mastered most of the Bible and two tractates of the Talmud. In 1871 the family moved to Moscow, where he continued his Jewish studies until his bar mitzvah. In 1876, his father enrolled him in a secondary technical school, and at his request the boy was exempted from writing on Sabbaths and Jewish holidays.

During the anti-Jewish pogroms that broke out in southern Russia in 1881, a public fast was declared for the Jews of the Russian cities. The young Ussishkin, who attended the mass prayer assembly at the Great Synagogue in Moscow, was impressed by its activist direction: not to mourn Jewish suffering, but to create conditions in which Jews would not be helpless before their attackers. When the [[BILU]] movement arose among Jewish students—to turn their backs on Russia and on the careers they had hoped to build there, and instead become agricultural workers in the Land of Israel in order to lay the foundation for an independent Jewish state—Ussishkin was amongst the first to join. He was ready to give up everything and make [[aliyah]]. Yet his steadfast insistence on his “conservative” opinions cost him dearly. At BILU’s founding meeting, when the question of government in the future Jewish state was raised, the progressive students all supported a republican system like that of the most enlightened modern countries, while Ussishkin demanded a monarchical regime, as in ancient times. Due to this, his candidacy was rejected and he was not included among the pioneers of the movement to move to Israel. Thus, he had to content himself—for the time being—with work for the Land of Israel from within Russia. When the [[Hibbat Zion|Ḥibbat Zion]] (Love of Zion) movement arose in 1882, he joined it and became one of its devoted activists.

Returning from the Land of Israel, he settled in Yekaterinoslav (today Dnipro), where he lived 15 years as an engineer and rising Zionist activist. After [[Theodor Herzl|Herzl]]’s ''Der Judenstaat'' appeared in 1896, Ussishkin was sent by the Russian Ḥovevei Zion committee to Paris to seek Baron [[Edmond de Rothschild]]’s support for the struggling settlement of Beer Tuvia. There he met [[Max Nordau]], and on his way back through Vienna, Herzl himself. He embraced Herzl’s program, attended the First [[Zionist Congress]] in Basel, was chosen to the presidium, and from the Second Congress onward advanced step by step to become head of Russian Zionism and one of the world leaders of the Zionist movement. He attended nearly every congress (except the Sixth). In 1902, at the Minsk Conference of Russian Zionists, he served as vice-chair and proposed organizing Zionist pioneers who would devote a year or two to agricultural work in Palestine—an idea he had already raised in “Bnei Moshe.”

When Herzl’s [[Uganda Proposal]] (1903) arose, Ussishkin rose in fierce opposition, denouncing Herzl for betraying Zionism. Instead of attending the Sixth Congress in Basel, he traveled to Palestine at the head of a Russian Ḥovevei Zion delegation (with Chaim Ettinger, Ze’ev Gluskin, and A. Druyanov). They stayed four months. On the very day the Congress opened in Basel, he convened in Zichron Yaakov the first assembly of the Jews of Palestine, laying the foundation for a “General Organization of the Jews of the Land of Israel.” He also took part in the founding of the Hebrew Teachers’ Union there. Returning to Russia, he intensified his anti-Uganda struggle, formed the “Zionists of Zion” faction, and convened the Kharkov Conference. When Herzl died soon after, Ussishkin hurried to Vienna to pay him his final respects. At the Seventh Congress (1905), he helped finally bury the Uganda idea, and was elected to the Actions Committee (executive). His pamphlet Nashe Programa (“Our Program”), translated widely, advocated settlement Zionism: not to wait for a political charter, but to begin building step by step.

From 1906, as head of the Odessa Committee of Ḥovevei Zion, Ussishkin devoted his energy to concrete action: founding new villages (Ein Ganim, Beer Yaakov, Nahalat Yehuda, Kfar Malal), supporting Hebrew schools and institutions, and strengthening Hebrew culture against Yiddishist trends. At the 10th Congress (1911), he forced [[David Wolffsohn]]’s resignation and achieved the first congress session conducted entirely in Hebrew.