December 31, 1898 Eliyahu Dobkin, a signer of the Israeli Declaration of Independence and the founder of the Israel Museum, is born in Bobruysk, Belarus. Dobkin is raised in a religious Zionist family. His father,…
Golda Meir, Israel’s first female prime minister, is born Golda Mabovitch in Kyiv, Ukraine, then part of czarist Russia.
Gershom Scholem, the pre-eminent scholar of Jewish mysticism, is born in Berlin. He immigrates to the Land of Israel in 1923.
“Der Judenstaat” (The Jewish State), subtitled, “An Attempt at a Modern Solution to the Jewish Question,” by Theodor Herzl is first published in Vienna. 500 copies are originally printed and distributed.
Moshe Sharett is born as Moshe Shertok in Kherson, Ukraine. Sharett’s parents were early Zionists, having been involved in the BILU movement in the early 1880’s.
The first passenger train arrives in Jerusalem from Jaffa as part of the first railroad project in the Ottoman-controlled Levant, the Jaffa-Jerusalem railway line.
William E. Blackstone, a Methodist lay leader and real estate investor, petitions President Benjamin Harrison on behalf of creating “a home for these wandering millions of Israel.” The Blackstone Memorial was the name of the signed petition.
Avraham (Granot) Granovsky, a signatory of the Israeli Declaration of Independence and Director-General of the Jewish National Fund, is born in Moldova.
The custom of planting trees in Israel on Tu B’Shevat begins when Ze’ev Yavetz, an educator in Zichron Ya’akov, takes his students to plant trees on the holiday.
Yosef Sprinzak, who would serve as the first Speaker of the Knesset and twice as Interim President, is born in Moscow.
The groundwork for the First Aliyah is laid with the formation of the BILU group at a meeting in the home of Israel Belkind in Kharkov, Ukraine.
Known for dying while defending the Jewish settlement of Tel Hai in 1920, Joseph Trumpeldor, a Zionist political activist and military hero, is born in Pyatigorsk, Russia.
Ze’ev Vladimir Jabotinsky is born in Odessa, Ukraine. He is mostly known for his revisionist attitudes towards Zionism, which serve as the ideological foundation of Israel’s Likud political party.
November 7, 1878 Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz, who becomes one of the 20th century’s leading Talmud scholars, is born in Kosava, Russia, now part of Belarus, to the head of the local rabbinical court, Rabbi…
Petah Tikvah (Gateway of Hope), today Israel’s fifth largest city, is established by a group of religious Jews wishing to leave Jerusalem and establish an agricultural moshav.
Raised in a traditional Jewish household, early Zionist activist Leo Motzkin is born in present-day Brovary, Ukraine.
December 14, 1858 The Ottoman Empire enacts the Tapu Law, which introduces title deed registration in the empire’s Arab provinces. An effort to apply the principles of the Ottoman Land Code of 1858, the land…
January 7, 1858 Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, considered the father of the modern Hebrew language, is born Eliezer Yitzchak Perelman in the Lithuanian village of Luzhky. Expected to become a rabbi, Ben-Yehuda becomes interested in the secular…
Scholar and writer Michah Joseph Berdichevski is best known for his Hebrew writings, which included his lengthy debate with Ahad Ha’am about the nature of Hebrew literature, as well as his extensive recording of Jewish folklore.
Chaim Nahman Bialik, famed Zionist poet, is born in the village of Radi, near Zhitomir in Volhynia (Northwest Ukraine).
After a successful campaign in Egypt, Napoleon issued a proclamation which declared Jews the rightful heirs of Palestine.
Ottoman Sultan Murad III orders an investigation into the number of synagogues in Safed.
