While attending a Hanukkah Ball arranged by Mevasseret Zion, a Paris Zionist Society, Max Nordau is the victim of an assassination attempt. Nordau, who together with Theodor Herzl had co-founded the World Zionist Organization, escapes unharmed.
The Sixth Zionist Congress, the last to be presided over by Theodor Herzl, convenes in Basel, Switzerland. It is the largest Zionist Congress held to date, with approximately 600 delegates in attendance.
British Secretary of State for the Colonies Joseph Chamberlain and Theodor Herzl meet to discuss Jewish settlement. At this meeting, Chamberlain proposes that the Jewish state be created in Uganda.
At the Fifth Zionist Congress, after the delegates again vote to table the idea of a national fund, Theodor Herzl delivers an impassioned address to the delegates, urging them to act immediately. The motion passes by a vote of 105 to 82.
February 26, 1901 Aharon Zisling, one of Israel’s founding fathers, is born in the Russian Empire in Minsk, now the capital of Belarus. He immigrates to Palestine in 1914 during the Second Aliyah and emerges…
June 4, 1899 Ya’akov Hazan, a leader in socialist politics through Israel’s first four decades, is born in Brest Litovsk, Russia. He is a founder of the Hashomer Hatzair scouting movement in Poland in 1915…
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,…
The Second Zionist Congress convenes in Basel, Switzerland. 400 delegates, including Theodore Herzl’s father, participate in the Second Congress, which is nearly double the size of the First Congress held the previous year.
Held a few weeks before the Second Zionist Congress was set to convene in Basle, Switzerland, 160 Russian Zionists from ninety-three cities and towns in Russia meet secretly in Warsaw, Poland.
The Orthodox movement created the Orthodox Union, and adopted a constitution and by-laws at their meeting at Congregation Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in New York.
Born Golda Mabovitch in Kiev, Russia, Meir’s family immigrated to the United States in 1906, settling in Milwaukee.
Gershom Scholem, the pre-eminent scholar of Jewish mysticism, is born in Berlin. He immigrates to the Land of Israel in 1923.
August 29, 1897 Spearheaded by Theodor Herzl, the First Zionist Congress opens in Basel, Switzerland, for three days of meetings with roughly 200 attendees. Herzl invites allies in the Zionist cause — Jews and non-Jews…
“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.
Nahum Goldmann is born in Visznevo, Lithuania. He is later a founder of the World Jewish Congress and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, as well as President of the World Zionist Organization.
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.
February 1, 1885 Russian Jewish novelist, editor and early Zionist Peretz Smolenskin dies of tuberculosis at 43 in Italy. Smolenskin was born in the Mogilev province of White Russia in 1842 and had a traditional…
Delegates convene in Katowice (presently southern Poland) for the first gathering of the Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) movement.
The May Laws, which restrict Jewish land-tenure and residency rights, are passed amidst widespread pogroms in Russia.
