Menachem Ussishkin

Menachem Ussishkin

Avraham Menachem Mendel Ussishkin (also Abraham Menacham Mendel Ussishkin , born August 16, 1863 in Dubrovno , Russian Empire ; died October 2, 1941 in Jerusalem , League of Nations mandate for Palestine ) was a leading Zionist and long-time President of the Jewish National Fund (JNF).

Life

Menachem Ussishkin was born in 1863 in Stetl Dubrovno, Belarus, in Tsarist Russia. After studying in Moscow , he became an engineer . In his youth he was an avid reader of contemporary Hebrew writers. From then on, the revival of Hebrew became one of the goals of his life's work.

Like many other early members of Chibbat Zion , he was roused by the pogroms of 1881 in Russia that demonstrated the need for Jewish emigration. Ussishkin began to work actively for various Zionist groups. After graduating from the Technological Institute in Moscow with an engineering degree, he devoted himself to Hebrew education, Zionist propaganda and raising funds in Russia.

Ussishkin was a "practical" Zionist for whom the agricultural settlement system in Eretz Israel was the first and most important step towards attaining a Jewish state. He recruited young people to work as pioneers and for agricultural settlements. He was a delegate at the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 and was appointed Hebrew Secretary of the Congress.

At the Seventh Congress (1905) he was one of those who forced the rejection of the Uganda plan . He proposed a Zionist program that was later adopted by the Zionist movement. Under his influence, the Zionist movement supported the establishment of agricultural settlements, educational and cultural institutions and a Hebrew university .

In 1919 Ussishkin settled himself in Eretz Israel. In 1922 he was elected chairman of the Jewish National Fund (קרן קימת לישראל, Keren Kayemet LeYisrael , KKL, Jewish National Fund), a position he held for almost twenty years. 1921–1923 he was chairman of the Jewish Agency (chairman of the Eretz Israel Executive), 1935–1941 chairman of the World Zionist Organization (WZO).

Active until the end, Ussishkin died in 1941. At his request, he was buried on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem .

literature

• Joseph Klausner : Menahem Ussishkin. His Life and Work. Published by the Joint Zionist Publication Committee, London n.d. (1944).
• John F. Oppenheimer (Red.) And a .: Lexicon of Judaism. 2nd Edition. Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, Gütersloh u. a. 1971, ISBN 3-570-05964-2 , col. 862.

Web links

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