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.
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.
Following the assassination of Czar Alexander II in March 1881, a wave of pogroms (violent attacks) against Jewish communities sweeps through southwestern Russia.
Czar Alexander II, the leader of Russia, is assassinated in St. Petersburg when a bomb is thrown into his carriage.
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.
February 5, 1879 Engineer and activist Pinhas Rutenberg, who is credited with bringing electricity to Palestine during the British Mandate, is born in the small town of Romny in present-day Ukraine. While working in a…
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.
February 24, 1874 Early Zionist leader Moshe Smilansky, whose influence ranges from the military to agriculture and literature, is born near Kyiv, Ukraine. Smilansky first visits Palestine in 1890 and settles in Rehovot in 1893…
Jews in all of Germany were finally given emancipation when the North German Confederation Constitution was extended to Bavaria.
An early Zionist supporter in England, Alfred Mond (who would later become the first Lord Melchett) is born in England. Despite the fact that his parents were Jewish, Mond was not raised as a Jew and in fact was married in the Anglican church and raised his children as Christians.
Raised in a traditional Jewish household, early Zionist activist Leo Motzkin is born in present-day Brovary, Ukraine.
One of the most distinguished land purchasers of the Yishuv, Yehoshua Hankin was born in Ukraine in 1864.
Theodor Herzl is born in Pest, Hungary. In addition to creating the World Zionist Organization, Herzl will help found the Jewish Colonial Trust in 1899 and the Jewish National Fund in 1901.
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.
