Israel Belkind

Israel Belkind ( born April 14, 1861 in Logoisk near Minsk, † 1929 in Berlin) was an educator and a founder of Bilu, a Jewish movement for the settlement of Eretz Israel even before the onset of political Zionism.

Life

He joined as a young student at the University of Kharkov in 1882 of the Bilu movement and went in the same year to Palestine, where he was among the founders of Rishon LeZion Moschawa after a stay in Mikveh Israel and henceforth an active interest in the Jewish colonization of the country took. Contrary to his own ideas told him agriculture less and he worked as a school founder ( in 1889 in Jaffa ) and teachers at a variety of schools in Palestine. He had excellent firsthand knowledge of all parts of the country.

In 1903, he founded and led since the short-lived agricultural school " Kiryat Sefer ", which was even though it was originally created differently, then arranged for housing and care of the pogrom orphans of Chisinau.

Israel Belkind was also literary activities and participated in various Hebrew anthologies.

Later he led a restless, wandering life, even outside Palestine, and moved more and more into writing ( non-fiction, memoirs ).

He died in Berlin and was buried in Rishon LeZion.

Works (selection)

• Asephath scheelath ha - Heshbon, collection of school computing tasks, Jerusalem 1896
• Reschith jediath ktibath ha - arez, textbook of geography, Jerusalem 1897
• Diwre Jeme ha - amim, General World History in popular representation, Jerusalem 1897 ff

Literature (selection )

• Zitron, Encyclopedia Zionists, 1924
• Wininger 1925 et seq, Vol I. VI. (Supplement)
• Nathan Michael Gelber, articles Belkind, Israel, in: Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol I., Berlin 1927