Yehoshua Barzillai: Difference between revisions

Because of conflicts between him and the short-sighted individuals involved in the revival effort, he suffered from scarcity and hardship. For about six months he lived in a tent in Ness Ziona, living on bread and olives and sleeping in the cowshed. Later, he was appointed director of the schools in Jaffa, secretary, and later director of the executive committee of the Lovers of Zion office in Jaffa. He participated in the craftsman center, in the founding of the girls’ school in Jaffa, and helped establish the settlements of Ḥadera, Reḥovot, Bartuvia, Meṭula, and Mishmar Hayarden. In every action he participated in, he put his soul’s passion into the cause of the people’s resurrection in their land. In the years 1893–1898, with the help of Yehuda Granovsky, he edited the monthly ''Letters from the Land of Israel''. He devoted himself to establishing the Workers’ Fund through the Foreign Affairs Committee. In 1899 he traveled abroad on behalf of the [[JCA]] in order to acquire the possibility of expanding the settlement in Ḥadera and spent a lot of money at his own expense to promote Herzl’s political Zionism, which he joined with enthusiasm from its inception, and especially to distribute shares of the Zionist bank [[JCT]] that was founded at that time. He participated in the Zionist conference in Minsk in 1902. During the [[Uganda proposal|Uganda Controversy]], he was one of the leaders of the fighters among the [[Zionists of Zion]]. In 1904, he was accepted as a clerk at the [[Anglo-Palestine Bank]] branch in Jaffa and later sent to establish and manage the bank’s branch in Jerusalem. There, he participated in the founding of the People’s House and the Hebrew Gymnasium. He fought the bank’s main management in order to expand assistance for Hebrew economic enterprise, without the strictures and cautions that are customary in a commercial bank for profit alone, and was therefore dismissed from his position, and the wave of protests that arose as a result in the settlement and in the Zionist world brought him only moral satisfaction. He devoted himself to cultural enterprises: publishing the books Qahelet and La‘am and organized the Craftsmen’s Center, the Workers’ Club, and more in Jerusalem.

At the beginning of World War I, he went to Europe for political Zionist advocacy. He returned to Switzerland, attended university classes in Geneva in his old age. There he died in May 1918 and was temporarily buried in a metal coffin in the city of Lausanne. Through the efforts of his son-in-law, Rabbi Yisrael Czerwinski, his coffin was brought to Eretz Israel, and at a funeral held for him by the National Committee, he was brought to be buried on the [[Mount of Olives]] on March 1933.

A neighborhood and a street in Tel Aviv were named after him.