January 21, 1882
The group BILU is formed at a meeting at the home of Israel Belkind in Kharkov, Ukraine, launching the infrastructure for the First Aliyah of Zionist immigration to the Land of Israel. BILU, from the Isaiah verse Beit Yaakov lekhu venelkha (“House of Jacob, let us go”), is founded by 30 students in response to the wave of pogroms that swept through Russia after the assassination of Czar Alexander II in March 1881. The founders set their goals as a return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, a rejection of the national spiritual revival in favor of physical settlement in Palestine, a dismissal of European Jewish emancipation as a guarantee of Jewish survival, the development of both cultural centers and physical settlement in Palestine, and the recognition that territory is needed for Jewish survival.
One early BILU member, Ze’ev Dubnow, the brother of Diaspora nationalist and historian Simon Dubnow, says: “The aim of our journey is rich in plans. We want to conquer Palestine and return to the Jews the political independence stolen from them two thousand years ago. And if it is willed, it is no dream. We must establish agricultural settlements, factories and industry. We must develop industry and put it into Jewish hands. And, above all, we must give young people military training and provide them with weapons. Then will the glorious day come, as prophesied by Isaiah in his promise of the restoration of Israel. With their weapons in their hands, the Jews will declare that they are the masters of their ancient homeland.” (Kressel, Getzel. “Bilu.” Encyclopaedia Judaica. Ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik. 2nd ed. Vol. 3. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. pp. 700-701.)
The group first calls itself DAVYU, Hebrew initials for dabber el Benei Yisrael ve-yissa’u (“Speak unto the Children of Israel that they go forward,” Exodus 14:15). The name is changed to BILU because, Belkind says, “instead of advising the people to go to Eretz Israel, we decided to go there ourselves.”
In the spring of 1882, BILU members travel to Constantinople, the Ottoman capital, where they make preparations for gaining approval for the establishment of agricultural settlements on Ottoman lands. When this effort fails, 14 members, led by Belkind, leave for Palestine, arriving in Jaffa on July 6, 1882. They then begin studies in the first agricultural school in the country, Mikveh Israel.
By 1884 their number in the land of Israel increases to 48, though the movement ceases to exist in Russia.
Some BILU members go to Nachalat Shiva, the first Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem outside the Old City walls. Others go to Rishon Lezion, and a small group founds Moshava Gedera.
They experience economic hardships, have many confrontations with Baron Edmond James de Rothschild’s representatives and are subjected to Arab hostilities. Some eventually return to Russia. Of all the original members of BILU, only one, Nenashe Meirovitz, survives to witness the establishment of the State of Israel.
