November 21, 1880
Joseph Trumpeldor is born in Pyatigorsk, Russia, where collective communal life grows in popularity. He combines his interest in Zionism with the establishment of agricultural collectives in the Land of Israel.
Drafted into the Russian army in 1902, he fights in the Russo-Japanese War. Despite losing his left arm, he goes into battle and is decorated for his bravery. Captured by the Japanese, he spends nearly two years in Japan in a prisoner of a war camp, where he organizes a Zionist group among the other captured Jewish soldiers.
In 1912, he moves to the Land of Israel to begin to put into practice his concepts of communal settlements. He begins working at Kibbutz Degania and helps organize defense units for the Jewish settlements in the Galilee. Upon the outbreak of World War I, he is deported to Egypt for refusing to accept Ottoman citizenship. In Egypt, he organizes the Zion Mule Corps, a force of 700 Jewish troops who also have been deported. Trumpeldor regards this unit as the precursor to the Jewish military force that will someday liberate the Land of Israel. Trumpeldor and the Zion Mule Corps fight alongside the British at Gallipoli in World War I.
After the war, he returns to Russia, where he advocates for the establishment of special Jewish regiments within the Russian army and establishes the He-Halutz movement, which trains Jewish youth for settlement in the Land of Israel.
He returns to the Land of Israel in 1919, and while defending the Upper Galilee Jewish settlement at Tel Chai from Arab attack, he is killed along with seven other Jewish pioneers. His dying words: “It’s good to die for our land.”
His words and actions elevate him to the status of a national hero. Thereafter, the Zionist idea of working the land becomes increasingly intertwined with defending it with one’s life.