Nachman Syrkin Attends the Versailles Peace Conference as a Delegate

Born in Belorussia in 1868, Syrkin joins the Hovevei Tzion (Lovers of Zion) movement in Minsk, after his family relocates there while he is in high school. By 1888, Syrkin, a former student of psychology and philosophy, pioneers the concept of combining non-Marxist socialism with Jewish Nationalism. Bringing these concepts to the first Zionist Congress, he attends as a leader of the socialist Zionists. Syrkin’s most famous work, an article titled “The Jewish Problem and the Socialist Jewish State,” is published in 1898 in an Austrian socialist monthly.