Israel Belkind

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Israel Belkind

Israel Belkind (born April 14, 1861 in Logoisk near Minsk , † September 30, 1929 in Berlin ) was an educator and one of the founders of Bilu , a Jewish movement for the settlement of Eretz Israel even before the onset of political Zionism .

Life

He joined the Bilu movement as a young student at the University of Kharkov in 1882 and went to Palestine that same year , where, after a stay in Mikveh Israel, he was one of the founders of the Moshava Rishon leTzion and henceforth an active part in the Jewish colonization of the country took. Contrary to his own ideas, agriculture was less appealing to him and he was active as a school founder (1889 in Jaffa ) and a teacher at various schools in Palestine. From his own experience he had excellent knowledge of all parts of the country.

In 1903 he founded and directed the short-lived agricultural school Kirjat sepher (also: Kiryat Sefer ), which was intended to accommodate and care for pogrom orphans from Kishinev (Chișinău). Alex Bein describes the brief history of this school and the associated agricultural teaching business:

“In the meantime, the Kishineff pogrom occurred and, on Ussishkin's initiative, a fund was set up to transfer the orphans of the Jews killed in the pogroms to Palestine, where they were to be trained. From this fund, the purchase of 5,000 dunams for a training farm and the later settlement of orphans in the country was planned. An amount should also be made available to Belkind for the school. Preparations for the implementation of the project were delayed, however, and Belkind, who did not want to wait, embarked for Palestine in December 1903 and took 52 orphans with him, for whom he had temporary accommodation in Rishon Letzion and Shefeya (at Zikhron Ya'akov ) found. He built a schoolhouse and a farm in Ben Shemen with funds he had raised himself. The buildings were completed in 1906. The school had already opened in makeshift rooms; but the new buildings had exhausted all of Belkind's resources, so he had to close the school and go abroad to raise more money. "

Not only was the school in Ben Shemen closed, but the entire Kiryat Sefer facility .

Israel Belkind was also active in literature and participated in various Hebrew compilations.

Later he led an unsteady wandering life, also outside Palestine, and turned more and more to writing (non-fiction books, memoirs). He died in the Jewish Hospital Berlin and was buried in Rischon leTzion.

Works (selection)

  • Asephath scheelath ha-cheschbon , collection of school arithmetic problems , Jerusalem 1896
  • Reschith jediath ktibath ha-arez , Textbook of the Description of the Earth, Jerusalem 1897
  • Diwre jeme ha-amim , General World History in Popular Representation, Jerusalem 1897 ff.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary for Israel Belkind at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (accessed February 13, 2016)
  2. ↑ Mordecai Naor: Eretz Israel. The 20th century. Könemann, Cologne, 1998, ISBN 3-89508-594-4 , p. 22
  3. ↑ Alex Bein: The Return to the Soil , p. 103.See also: Orphanage which became youth village
personal data
SURNAME Belkind, Israel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian-German BILU pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH April 14, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Logoisk
DATE OF DEATH September 30, 1929
Place of death Berlin