Menaḥem Ussishkin

Menaḥem Ussishkin (1863–1941) was a prominent Russian-born leader of the Zionist movement, known for his pragmatic approach, forceful advocacy of immediate settlement, and uncompromising commitment to the Hebrew language. Born into a religious and prosperous family in White Russia, Ussishkin’s political awakening came with the 1881 pogroms, which spurred him to join the early national movements, including Ḥibbat Zion (Love of Zion). As an engineer and passionate ideologue, he quickly rose to prominence, becoming a key figure in Russian Zionism. Ussishkin famously fiercely opposed Theodor Herzl’s Uganda Proposal (1903), seeing it as a betrayal of the movement’s core mission centered on the Land of Israel. Following Herzl’s death, Ussishkin became a leading figure of the “Zionists of Zion” faction and dedicated the latter half of his life, particularly as the President of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) from 1923, to the ‘practical redemption of the soil’ through the large-scale acquisition of land in Eretz Israel, earning him the nickname “the Iron Man.”

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 Ḥibbat Zion (Love of Zion) movement arose in 1882, he joined it and became one of its devoted activists.

In the summer of 1882 he graduated from the Real School and that fall entered the Moscow Polytechnic School. Soon he founded a Jewish students’ society for cultural work, where he gave his first lecture—on the Maccabean revolt. In 1884, when the “Bnei Zion” student association was established (lasting until 1918, with similar groups formed in other Russian cities), Ussishkin was one of its leaders. That same year, he attended the Katowice Conference of Ḥovevei Zion. Though still too young to leave a mark, he learned and absorbed in order to act. In 1885 he was elected secretary of Hovevei Zion in Moscow. At the 1887 Druskininkai Conference, he was elected secretary of the presidium, and his active participation showed that he saw work for Zion as the serious essence of life. From that year on, he began publishing articles on Zionist thought and action in HaMelitz, in Nathan Birnbaum’s Auto-Emancipation (the newspaper, not the essay), and in Zion (edited by S. Bambus and M. Löwe in Berlin). In 1889 he graduated as an engineer-technologist. That same year, the secret society “Bnei Moshe” was founded (March 10, 1889) by Aḥad Ha‘am, who sought to prepare the people spiritually for national revival. Ussishkin, the practical engineer, long hesitated over the value of “spiritual talk” when all forces were needed for practical work in the Land of Israel, but in the end he joined as well. At the 1890 Odessa Conference of Hovevei Zion, he already participated as a member of “Bnei Moshe.”

In 1891 he married Esther, daughter of Shmaryahu Paley. For their honeymoon, they traveled to the Land of Israel, staying there for 49 days. He intended to create a new “fashion” of honeymoon trips to the Land of Israel, instead of to Europe—but few imitated him. He published his impressions in Russian in diary form, later translated into Hebrew in the “Ussishkin Book” on his 70th birthday. That same year, when Aḥad Ha‘am published “Truth from the Land of Israel”—a pessimistic, disheartening report—Ussishkin boldly opposed his teacher and mentor, declaring instead: “We shall surely go up and inherit it, for we are able to do it.”

Returning from the Land, he settled in Yekaterinoslav (today Dnipro), where he lived 15 years as an engineer and rising Zionist activist. After Herzl’s Der Judenstaat appeared in 1896, Ussishkin was sent by the Russian Hovevei 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 *Hovevei 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 Hovevei 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.

He remained active through the turmoil of World War I, the Russian revolutions, and beyond. He fought for Hebrew as the national language, opposed partition plans, and tirelessly promoted land redemption through the Jewish National Fund. In 1923 he became president of the JNF, devoting all his energies to acquiring land across Palestine, including the Jezreel, Hefer, and Hula valleys, as well as the Negev. His determination earned him the nickname “the Iron Man” and the phrase: “Nothing can withstand the will.”

He died in Jerusalem on the eve of October 2, 1941, and was buried in the Nicanor Cave on Mount Scopus, near his mentor Leon Pinsker. Streets, settlements, and institutions were later named for him, including Kibbutz Kfar Menachem, the “Metzudat Ussishkin” (Ussishkin Citadel) bloc of settlements in the north, and “Ussishkin Day” declared by the JNF.

Quotes

• The Hebrew nation will either exist on its land with its language, or degenerate without a land and without a language.
  • In “On The Revival of The Language.”
• Haman of our time (Hitler) tried to destroy the Jewish people, to break its spirit and body. But he awakened great heroism among us, unparalleled in history... The Jews announce: We will not surrender! The Torah of Truth is our Torah, the culture of Truth is our culture. We will not give up our heritage. We will continue the fight until victory comes.
  • In “The Yishuv and The War.”
• There is no fear for an Arab minority in the land when we become a majority in it - I wish the fate of the Arabs in their own lands were as good as their fate in the Jewish Land of Israel.
  • In his speech to the London Conference of 1939.
• In the building of our ancient land, we will redeem our people, who has given and continues to give their share to human culture.
  • In “The Yishuv and The War.”
• We redeem our people physically, by giving them land under our feet, but we also redeem them spiritually, by reviving our language and culture.
  • In “The First Condition For Our Existence.”
• The Hebrew revival movement stands on two eternal foundations: faith and will. Faith that the time of our redemption has come, and the will to make all the sacrifices necessary for the work of redemption.
  • In “Will and Faith”
• Arabs fear the law prohibiting land purchases more than we fear this decree.
  • In “The Redemption of The Land in The Days of The War.”
• The complete liberation of the nation will come only if it stands on its two feet on our land.
  • In “Teenage, Land and Faith”
• If Israel redeems the Land of Israel, then the Land of Israel will redeem the people of Israel.
  • In “Two Semi-Centennials: Ḥibat-Zion and the Jewish National Fund.”
• Many have claimed that our work here is expensive, that with the money spent in the Land of Israel, it would be possible to help all the unfortunate Jews in the world. But is there any value in everything that is done in the Diaspora? We must concentrate all our strength and means on building Israel, because here is our only refuge, from here we will not move.
  • In “Who is the fearless and the tender-hearted?.”
• Our movement is the movement of redemption—and its time span is two thousand years, from the day our Temple was destroyed and the people were exiled from their land
  • In “The Idea of Redemption in its Time.”
• This is the ideology that has emerged recently regarding the ‘dispossession’ of Arabs from their land. Here, our enemies have created, with full knowledge that this is a false accusation, a claim that could strike us in the wider world. Even in our camp, good Zionists arose who, out of a hypertrophy of justice and fairness, began to doubt the righteousness of our actions toward the Arabs.
• What exactly is ‘dispossession’? If someone is sitting on their land, living their own life, with their material situation stable and secure, and one clear day they are expelled from their workplace and collapse, with no other source of income to support themselves – that is dispossession.
• One nation (Arabs) has everything, and not only here, but also in Syria, in Egypt, in Iraq, on the Arabian Peninsula and in the Arab states of North Africa. And on the other hand, there is a nation standing on a high spiritual and cultural level, which in all the countries of the world is struggling between life and death, and behold, it comes and argues that a place must also be found for it in its historic land, and for this, it is prepared to pay in blood, sweat, and labor, and for every patch of land acquired by it, on which a poor and isolated Bedouin previously sat, it pays with its best money compensation such as he never dared to dream of—is this to be called dispossession?"
  • In “During The Days of Settlement in Exile and in the Land.”
• The Zionist aspiration includes not only the return to the Land of Israel, but also the return to the soil.
  • In “Between Shiny Gold and a Burning Sword.”
• But what? The Arab leaders want to take power into their own hands, not only in Syria and Iraq and Egypt and other countries, but also in the Land of Israel.... I ask: What nation is there in the world that has one hundred percent of its people concentrated in its national state? How many millions of Germans, French, Italians and even English are there in the world who are scattered throughout all countries, and why is it forbidden for a small part of the Arabs to live as a minority in a country neighboring them? There is no other answer to this than the old rule: for one nation – everything, and for the other – nothing.
  • In “Memorandum to the ‘Partition Committee’ in Israel.”
• Even the Arabs, who are so insistent on their rights in the land, do not have an Arabic name for the Land of Israel. They use the name of the Philistines. Some have tried to call the Land of Israel by the name of southern Syria – but they do not have a special name in the Arabic language. And at the same time, they abuse us and do not want to acknowledge the Hebrew name of the land – Eretz Israel.
  • In “Memorandum to the ‘Partition Committee’ in Israel.”