Six-Day War
The Six-Day War known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War, or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between 5 and 10 June 1967 by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt and Syria. Relations between Israel and its neighbours were not normalised after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. In 1956 Israel invaded the Sinai peninsula in Egypt, with one of its objectives being the reopening of the Straits of Tiran that Egypt had blocked to Israeli shipping since 1950. Israel was forced to withdraw, but was guaranteed that the Straits of Tiran would remain open. A United Nations Emergency Force was deployed along the border, but there was no demilitarisation agreement. In the months prior to June 1967, tensions became dangerously heightened. Israel reiterated its post-1956 position that the closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping would be a cause for war. In May Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced that the straits would be closed to Israeli vessels and mobilised its Egyptian forces along its border with Israel.
On 5 June, Israel launched what it claimed were a series of preemptive airstrikes against Egyptian airfields. Which side caused the war is one of a number of controversies relating to the conflict; the Egyptians were caught by surprise, nearly the entire Egyptian air force was destroyed with few Israeli losses, giving the Israelis air supremacy. The Israelis launched a ground offensive into the Gaza Strip and the Sinai, which again caught the Egyptians by surprise. After some initial resistance, Nasser ordered the evacuation of the Sinai. Israeli forces rushed westward in pursuit of the Egyptians, inflicted heavy losses, conquered the Sinai. Jordan had entered into a defense pact with Egypt a week. About an hour after the Israeli air attack, the Egyptian commander of the Jordanian army was ordered by Cairo to begin attacks on Israel. Israel subsequently captured and occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from the Jordanians and the Golan Heights from Syria. Egypt and Jordan agreed to a ceasefire on 8 June, Syria agreed on 9 June.
In the aftermath of the war, Israel had crippled the Egyptian and Jordanian militaries, having killed over 20,000 troops while only losing fewer than 1,000 of its own. The Israeli success was the result of a well-prepared and enacted strategy, the poor leadership of the Arab states, their poor military leadership and strategy. Israel seized the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria. Israel's international standing improved in the following years, its victory humiliated Egypt and Syria, leading Nasser to resign in shame. The speed and ease of Israel's victory would lead to a dangerous overconfidence within the ranks of the Israel Defense Forces, contributing to initial Arab successes in the subsequent 1973 Yom Kippur War, although Israeli forces were successful and defeated the Arab militaries; the displacement of civilian populations resulting from the war would have long-term consequences, as 300,000 Palestinians fled the West Bank and about 100,000 Syrians left the Golan Heights.
Across the Arab world, Jewish minority communities fled or were expelled, with refugees going to Israel or Europe. After the 1956 Suez Crisis, Egypt agreed to the stationing of a United Nations Emergency Force in the Sinai to ensure all parties would comply with the 1949 Armistice Agreements. In the following years there were numerous minor border clashes between Israel and its Arab neighbors Syria. In early November 1966, Syria signed a mutual defense agreement with Egypt. Soon after this, in response to Palestine Liberation Organisation guerilla activity, including a mine attack that left three dead, the Israeli Defence Force attacked the village of as-Samu in the Jordanian-occupied West Bank. Jordanian units that engaged the Israelis were beaten back. King Hussein of Jordan criticized Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser for failing to come to Jordan's aid, "hiding behind UNEF skirts". In May 1967, Nasser received false reports from the Soviet Union that Israel was massing on the Syrian border.
Nasser began massing his troops in two defensive lines in the Sinai Peninsula on Israel's border, expelled the UNEF force from Gaza and Sinai and took over UNEF positions at Sharm el-Sheikh, overlooking the Straits of Tiran. Israel repeated declarations it had made in 1957 that any closure of the Straits would be considered an act of war, or justification for war, but Nasser closed the Straits to Israeli shipping on 22–23 May. After the war, U. S. President Lyndon Johnson commented: If a single act of folly was more responsible for this explosion than any other, it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision that the Straits of Tiran would be closed; the right of innocent, maritime passage must be preserved for all nations. On 30 May and Egypt signed a defense pact; the following day, at Jordan's invitation, the Iraqi army began deploying troops and armoured units in Jordan. They were reinforced by an Egyptian contingent. On 1 June, Israel formed a National
Abraham
Abraham Abram, is the common patriarch of the three Abrahamic religions. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the covenant of the pieces, the special relationship between the Jewish people and God; the narrative in Genesis revolves around the themes of land. Abraham is called by God to leave the house of his father Terah and settle in the land given to Canaan but which God now promises to Abraham and his progeny. Various candidates are put forward. Abraham purchases a tomb at Hebron to be Sarah's grave. Abraham marries Keturah and has six more sons; the Abraham story cannot be definitively related to any specific time, it is agreed that the patriarchal age, along with the exodus and the period of the judges, is a late literary construct that does not relate to any period in actual history. A common hypothesis among scholars is that it was composed in the early Persian period as a result of tensions between Jewish landowners who had stayed in Judah during the Babylonian captivity and traced their right to the land through their "father Abraham", the returning exiles who based their counter-claim on Moses and the Exodus tradition.
Terah, the ninth in descent from Noah, was the father of three sons: Abram and Haran. The entire family, including grandchildren, lived in Ur of the Chaldees. In his youth, Abram worked in Terah's idol shop. Haran was the father of Lot, thus Lot was Abram's nephew. Haran died in Ur of the Chaldees. Abram married Sarah, barren. Terah, with Abram and Lot departed for Canaan, but settled in a place named Haran, where Terah died at the age of 205. God had told Abram to leave his country and kindred and go to a land that he would show him, promised to make of him a great nation, bless him, make his name great, bless them that bless him, curse them who may curse him. Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran with his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, the substance and souls that they had acquired, traveled to Shechem in Canaan. There was a severe famine in the land of Canaan, so that Abram and Lot and their households, traveled to Egypt. On the way Abram told Sarai to say that she was his sister, so that the Egyptians would not kill him.
When they entered Egypt, the Pharaoh's officials praised Sarai's beauty to Pharaoh, they took her into the palace and gave Abram goods in exchange. God afflicted Pharaoh and his household with plagues, which led Pharaoh to try to find out what was wrong. Upon discovering that Sarai was a married woman, Pharaoh demanded that Sarai leave; when they came back to the Bethel and Hai area, Abram's and Lot's sizable herds occupied the same pastures. This became a problem for the herdsmen; the conflicts between herdsmen had become so troublesome that Abram suggested that Lot choose a separate area, either on the left hand or on the right hand, that there be no conflict amongst brethren. Lot chose to go eastward to the plain of Jordan where the land was well watered everywhere as far as Zoar, he dwelled in the cities of the plain toward Sodom. Abram went south to Hebron and settled in the plain of Mamre, where he built another altar to worship God. During the rebellion of the Jordan River cities against Elam, Abram's nephew, was taken prisoner along with his entire household by the invading Elamite forces.
The Elamite army came to collect the spoils of war, after having just defeated the king of Sodom's armies. Lot and his family, at the time, were settled on the outskirts of the Kingdom of Sodom which made them a visible target. One person who escaped capture told Abram what happened. Once Abram received this news, he assembled 318 trained servants. Abram's force headed north in pursuit of the Elamite army, who were worn down from the Battle of Siddim; when they caught up with them at Dan, Abram devised a battle plan by splitting his group into more than one unit, launched a night raid. Not only were they able to free the captives, Abram's unit chased and slaughtered the Elamite King Chedorlaomer at Hobah, just north of Damascus, they freed Lot, as well as his household and possessions, recovered all of the goods from Sodom, taken. Upon Abram's return, Sodom's king came out to meet with him in the Valley of Shaveh, the "king's dale". Melchizedek king of Salem, a priest of God Most High, brought out bread and wine and blessed Abram and God.
Abram gave Melchizedek a tenth of everything. The king of Sodom offered to let Abram keep all the possessions if he would return his people. Abram refused any deal from the king of Sodom, other than the share to which his allies were entitled; the voice of the Lord came to Abram in a vision and repeated the promise of the land and descendants as numerous as the stars. Abram and God made a covenant ce
Soul
The soul, in many religious and mythological traditions, is the incorporeal essence of a living being. Soul or psyche are the mental abilities of a living being: reason, feeling, memory, thinking, etc. Depending on the philosophical system, a soul can either be immortal. In Judeo-Christianity, only human beings have immortal souls. For example, the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas attributed "soul" to all organisms but argued that only human souls are immortal. Other religions hold that all living things from the smallest bacterium to the largest of mammals are the souls themselves and have their physical representative in the world; the actual self is the soul, while the body is only a mechanism to experience the karma of that life. Thus if we see a tiger there is a self-conscious identity residing in it, a physical representative in the world; some teach that non-biological entities possess souls. This belief is called animism. Greek philosophers, such as Socrates and Aristotle, understood that the soul must have a logical faculty, the exercise of, the most divine of human actions.
At his defense trial, Socrates summarized his teaching as nothing other than an exhortation for his fellow Athenians to excel in matters of the psyche since all bodily goods are dependent on such excellence. The current consensus of modern science is that there is no evidence to support the existence of the soul when traditionally defined as the spiritual breath of the body. In metaphysics, the concept of "Soul" may be equated with that of "Mind" in order to refer to the consciousness and intellect of the individual; the Modern English word "soul", derived from Old English sáwol, sáwel, was first attested in the 8th century poem Beowulf v. 2820 and in the Vespasian Psalter 77.50. It is cognate with other German and Baltic terms for the same idea, including Gothic saiwala, Old High German sêula, sêla, Old Saxon sêola, Old Low Franconian sêla, sîla, Old Norse sála and Lithuanian siela. Deeper etymology of the Germanic word is unclear; the original concept behind the Germanic root is thought to mean “coming from or belonging to the sea ”, because of the Germanic and pre-Celtic belief in souls emerging from and returning to sacred lakes, Old Saxon sêola compared to Old Saxon sêo.
The Koine Greek Septuagint uses ψυχή to translate Hebrew נפש, meaning "life, vital breath", refers to a mortal, physical life, but in English it is variously translated as "soul, life, person, mind, living being, emotion, passion". Vulgate – Creavitque Deus cete grandia, et omnem animam viventem atque motabilem. Authorized King James Version – "And God created great whales, every living creature that moveth."The Koine Greek word ψυχή, "life, consciousness", is derived from a verb meaning "to cool, to blow", hence refers to the breath, as opposed to σῶμα, meaning "body". Psychē occurs juxtaposed to σῶμα, as seen in Matthew 10:28: Greek – καὶ μὴ φοβεῖσθε ἀπὸ τῶν ἀποκτεννόντων τὸ σῶμα, τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν μὴ δυναμένων ἀποκτεῖναι· φοβεῖσθε δὲ μᾶλλον τὸν δυνάμενον καὶ ψυχὴν καὶ σῶμα ἀπολέσαι ἐν γεέννῃ. Vulgate – et nolite timere eos qui occidunt corpus animam autem non possunt occidere sed potius eum timete qui potest et animam et corpus perdere in gehennam. Authorized King James Version – "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him, able to destroy both soul and body in hell."Paul the Apostle used ψυχή and πνεῦμα to distinguish between the Jewish notions of נפש and רוח ruah.
In the ancient Egyptian religion, an individual was believed to be made up of various elements, some physical and some spiritual. Similar ideas are found in ancient Babylonian religion. Kuttamuwa, an 8th-century BCE royal official from Sam'al, ordered an inscribed stele erected upon his death; the inscription requested that his mourners commemorate his life and his afterlife with feasts "for my soul, in this stele". It is one of the earliest references to a soul as a separate entity from the body; the 800-pound basalt stele is 2 ft wide. It was uncovered in the third season of excavations by the Neubauer Expedition of the Oriental Institute in Chicago, Illinois; the Bahá'í Faith affirms that "the soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, whose mystery no mind, however acute, can hope to unravel". Bahá'u'lláh stated that the soul not only continues to live after the physical death of the human body, but is, in fact, immortal. Heaven can be seen as the soul's state of nearness to God.
Each state follows as a natural consequence of individual efforts, or the lack thereof, to develop spiritually. Bahá'u'lláh taught that individuals have no existence prior to their life here on earth and the soul's evolution is always towards God and away from the material world. Buddhism teaches that all things are in a constant
Messiah
In Abrahamic religions, a messiah or messias is a saviour or liberator of a group of people. The concepts of moshiach, of a Messianic Age originated in Judaism, in the Hebrew Bible. Messiahs were not Jewish: the Book of Isaiah refers to Cyrus the Great, king of the Achaemenid Empire, as a messiah for his decree to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple. Ha mashiach referred to as melekh mashiach, is to be a human leader, physically descended from the paternal Davidic line through King David and King Solomon, he is thought to accomplish predetermined things in only one future arrival, including the unification of the tribes of Israel, the gathering of all Jews to Eretz Israel, the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem, the ushering in of a Messianic Age of global universal peace, the annunciation of the world to come. In Christianity, the Messiah is called the Christ, from Greek: translit. Khristós, translating the Hebrew word of the same meaning; the concept of the Messiah in Christianity originated from the Messiah in Judaism.
However, unlike the concept of the Messiah in Judaism, the Messiah in Christianity is the Son of God. Christ became the accepted Christian designation and title of Jesus of Nazareth, because Christians believe that the messianic prophecies in the Old Testament were fulfilled in his mission and resurrection; these include the prophecies of him being descended from the Davidic line, being declared King of the Jews which happened on the day of his crucifixion. They believe that Christ will fulfill the rest of the messianic prophecies that he will usher in a Messianic Age and the world to come at his Second Coming. In Islam, Jesus was a prophet and the Masîḥ, the Messiah sent to the Israelites, he will return to Earth at the end of times, along with the Mahdi, defeat al-Masih ad-Dajjal, the false Messiah. In Ahmadiyya theology, these prophecies concerning the Mahdi and the second coming of Jesus have been fulfilled in Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement, the terms'Messiah' and'Mahdi' are synonyms for one and the same person.
In Chabad messianism, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, sixth Rebbe of Chabad Lubavitch, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, seventh Rebbe of Chabad, are Messiah claimants. Resembling early Christianity, the deceased Schneerson is believed to be the Messiah among some adherents of the Chabad movement. Messiah means "anointed one". In Hebrew, the Messiah is referred to as מלך המשיח The Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament renders all thirty-nine instances of the Hebrew word for "anointed" as Χριστός; the New Testament records the Greek transliteration Μεσσίας, Messias twice in John.al-Masīḥ is the Arabic word for messiah. In modern Arabic, it is used as one of the many titles of Jesus. Masīḥ is used by Arab Christians as well as Muslims, is written as Yasūʿ al-Masih by Arab Christians or ʿĪsā al-Masīḥ by Muslims; the word al-Masīḥ means "the anointed", "the traveller", or the "one who cures by caressing". The literal translation of the Hebrew word mashiach is "anointed", which refers to a ritual of consecrating someone or something by putting holy oil upon it.
It is used throughout the Hebrew Bible in reference to a wide variety of objects. In Jewish eschatology, the term came to refer to a future Jewish king from the Davidic line, who will be "anointed" with holy anointing oil, to be king of God's kingdom, rule the Jewish people during the Messianic Age. In Judaism, the Messiah is not considered to be a pre-existent divine Son of God, he is considered to be a great political leader. That is why he is referred to as Messiah ben David, which means "Messiah, son of David"; the messiah, in Judaism, is considered to be a great, charismatic leader, well oriented with the laws that are followed in Judaism. He will be the one who will not "judge by what his eyes see" or "decide by what his ears hear". Belief in the eventual coming of a future messiah is a fundamental part of Judaism, is one of Maimonides' 13 Principles of Faith. Maimonides describes the identity of the Messiah in the following terms: And if a king shall arise from among the House of David, studying Torah and occupied with commandments like his father David, according to the written and oral Torah, he will impel all of Israel to follow it and to strengthen breaches in its observance, will fight God's wars, this one is to be treated as if he were the anointed one.
If he succeeded and built the Holy Temple in its proper place and gathered the dispersed ones of Israel together, this is indeed the anointed one for certain, he will mend the entire world to worship the Lord together, as it is stated: "For I shall turn for the nations a clear tongue, so that they will all proclaim the Name of the Lord, to worship Him w
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. The basic form of the rabbi developed in the Pharisaic and Talmudic era, when learned teachers assembled to codify Judaism's written and oral laws; the first sage for whom the Mishnah uses the title of rabbi was Yohanan ben Zakkai, active in the early-to-mid first century AD. In more recent centuries, the duties of a rabbi became influenced by the duties of the Protestant Christian minister, hence the title "pulpit rabbis", in 19th-century Germany and the United States rabbinic activities including sermons, pastoral counseling, representing the community to the outside, all increased in importance. Within the various Jewish denominations there are different requirements for rabbinic ordination, differences in opinion regarding, to be recognized as a rabbi. For example, Orthodox Judaism does not ordain women as rabbis. Non-Orthodox movements have chosen to do so for what they view as halakhic reasons as well as ethical reasons; the Hebrew word "master" רב rav, which means "great one", is the original Hebrew form of the title.
The form of the title in English and many other languages derives from the possessive form in Hebrew of rav: רַבִּי rabbi, meaning "My Master", the way a student would address a master of Torah. The word Rav in turn derives from the Semitic root ר-ב-ב, which in biblical Aramaic means "great" in many senses, including "revered", but appears as a prefix in construct forms. Although the usage rabbim "many" "the majority, the multitude" occurs for the assembly of the community in the Dead Sea scrolls there is no evidence to support an association with the title "Rabbi." The root is cognate to Arabic ربّ rabb, meaning "lord". As a sign of great respect, some great rabbis are called "The Rav". Rabbi is not an occupation found in the Hebrew Bible, ancient generations did not employ related titles such as Rabban, Ribbi, or Rab to describe either the Babylonian sages or the sages in Israel; the titles "Rabban" and "Rabbi" are first mentioned in the Mishnah. The term was first used for Rabban Gamaliel the elder, Rabban Simeon his son, Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai, all of whom were patriarchs or presidents of the Sanhedrin in the first century.
The title "Rabbi" occurs in the books of Matthew and John in the New Testament, where it is used in reference to "Scribes and Pharisees" as well as to Jesus. Sephardic and Yemenite Jews pronounce this word רִבִּי ribbī. Other variants are rəvī and, in Yiddish, rebbə; the word could be compared to the Syriac word ܪܒܝ rabi. In ancient Hebrew, rabbi was a proper term of address while speaking to a superior, in the second person, similar to a vocative case. While speaking about a superior, in the third person one could say rabbo; the term evolved into a formal title for members of the Patriarchate. Thus, the title gained an irregular plural form: רַבָּנִים rabbanim, not רַבָּי rabbay; the governments of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were based on a system that included the Jewish kings, the Jewish prophets, the legal authority of the high court of Jerusalem, the Great Sanhedrin, the ritual authority of the priesthood. Members of the Sanhedrin had to receive their ordination in an uninterrupted line of transmission from Moses, yet rather than being referred to as rabbis they were called priests or scribes, like Ezra, called in the Bible "Ezra, the priest, the scribe, a scribe of the words of God's commandments and of His statutes unto Israel."
"Rabbi" as a religious title does not appear in the Hebrew Bible. All of the above personalities would have been expected to be steeped in the wisdom of the Torah and the commandments, which would have made them "rabbis" in the modern sense of the word; this is illustrated by a two-thousand-year-old teaching in the Mishnah, Ethics of the Fathers, which observed about King David, "One who learns from their companion a single chapter, a single halakha, a single verse, a single Torah statement, or a single letter, must treat them with honor. For so we find with David King of Israel, who learned nothing from Ahitophel except two things, yet called him his teacher, his guide, his intimate, as it is said:'You are a man of my measure, my guide, my intimate'. One can derive from this the following: If David King of Israel who learned nothing from Ahitophel except for two things, called him his teacher, his guide, his intimate, one who learns from their companion a single chapter, a single halakha, a single verse, a single statement, or a single letter, how much more must they treat them with honor.
And honor is due only for Torah, as it is said:'The wise shall inherit honor','and the perfect shall inherit good'. And only Torah is good, as it is said:'I have given you a good teaching, do not forsake My Torah'." With the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem, the end of the Jewish monarchy, the decline of the dual institutions of prophets and the priesthood, the focus of scholarly and spiritual leadership within the Jewish people shifted to the sages of the Men of the Great Assembly. This assembly was composed of the earliest group of "rabbis" in the mor
Kibbutz
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel, traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming has been supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as a combination of socialism and Zionism. In recent decades, some kibbutzim have been privatized and changes have been made in the communal lifestyle. A member of a kibbutz is called a kibbutznik. In 2010, there were 270 kibbutzim in Israel, their factories and farms account for 9% of Israel's industrial output, worth US$8 billion, 40% of its agricultural output, worth over $1.7 billion. Some kibbutzim had developed substantial high-tech and military industries. For example, in 2010, Kibbutz Sasa, containing some 200 members, generated $850 million in annual revenue from its military-plastics industry; the kibbutzim are organised in the secular Kibbutz Movement with some 230 kibbutzim, the Religious Kibbutz Movement with 16 kibbutzim and the much smaller religious Poalei Agudat Yisrael with two kibbutzim, all part of the wider communal settlement movement.
The kibbutzim were founded by members of the Bilu movement. Like the members of the First Aliyah who came before them and established agricultural villages, most members of the Second Aliyah planned to become farmers; the first kibbutz was Degania Alef, founded in 1909. Joseph Baratz, one of the pioneers of the kibbutz movement, wrote a book about his experiences. We were happy enough working on the land, but we knew more and more that the ways of the old settlements were not for us; this was not the way we hoped to settle the country—this old way with Jews on top and Arabs working for them. There must be a better way. Though Baratz and others wanted to farm the land themselves, becoming independent farmers was not a realistic option in 1909; as Arthur Ruppin, a proponent of Jewish agricultural colonization of the Trans-Jordan would say, "The question was not whether group settlement was preferable to individual settlement. The Galilee was swampy, the Judaean Mountains rocky, the south of the country, the Negev, was a desert.
To make things more challenging, most of the settlers had no prior farming experience. The sanitary conditions were poor. Malaria and cholera were rampant. Bedouins settled areas. Sabotage of irrigation canals and burning of crops were common. Living collectively was the most logical way to be secure in an unwelcoming land. On top of safety considerations, establishing a farm was a capital-intensive project; the land had been purchased by the greater Jewish community. From around the world, Jews dropped coins into Jewish National Fund "Blue Boxes" for land purchases in Palestine. In 1909, nine other men, two women established themselves at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee near the Arab village of Umm Juni/Juniya; these teenagers had hitherto worked as day laborers converting wetlands for human development, as masons, or as hands at the older Jewish settlements. Their dream was now to work for themselves, they called their community "Kvutzat Degania", now Degania Alef. The founders of Degania endured backbreaking labor: "The body is crushed, the legs fail, the head hurts, the sun burns and weakens," wrote one of the pioneers.
At times, half of the kibbutz members could not report for many left. Despite the difficulties, by 1914, Degania had fifty members. Other kibbutzim were founded around the Sea of the nearby Jezreel Valley; the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, followed by the arrival of the British, brought with it benefits for the Jewish community of Palestine and its kibbutzim. The Ottoman authorities had made immigration to Palestine restricted land purchases. Rising antisemitism forced many Jews to flee Eastern Europe. To escape the pogroms, tens of thousands of Russian Jews immigrated to Palestine in the early 1920s, in a wave of immigration, called the Third Aliyah. Zionist Jewish youth movements flourished in the 1920s, from right-wing movements like Betar to left-wing socialist groups such as Dror, Brit Haolim, HabBonim, Hashomer Hatzair. In contrast to those who came as part of the Second Aliyah, these youth group members had some agricultural training before embarking. Members of the Second Aliyah and Third Aliyah were less to be Russian, since emigration from Russia was closed off after the Russian Revolution.
European Jews who settled on kibbutzim between the World Wars were from other countries in Eastern Europe, including Germany. In the early days, communal meetings were limited to practical matters, but in the 1920s and 1930s, they became more informal. Instead of meeting in the dining room, the group would sit around a campfire. Rather than reading minutes, the session would begin with a group dance. Remembering her youth on a kibbutz on the shores of the Kinneret, one woman said: "Oh, how beautiful it was when we all took part in the discussions, nights of searching for one another—that is what I call
Zvi Hirsch Kalischer
Zvi Hirsch Kalischer was an Orthodox German rabbi who expressed views, from a religious perspective, in favour of the Jewish re-settlement of the Land of Israel, which predate Theodor Herzl and the Zionist movement. He was the grandfather of Salomon Kalischer. Kalischer was born in Lissa in the Prussian Province of Posen. Destined for the rabbinate, he received his Talmudic education from Jacob of Lissa and Rabbi Akiva Eiger of Posen. After his marriage he left Jacob of Lissa and settled in Thorn, a city on the Vistula River in Prussia and now Toruń, in northern Poland, where he spent the rest of his life. In Toruń, he took an active interest in the affairs of the Jewish community, for more than forty years held the office of Rabbinatsverweser. Disinterestedness was a prominent feature of his character, his wife, by means of a small business, provided their meager subsistence. The name Zvi Hirsh is a bilingual tautological name in Yiddish, it means "deer-deer" and is traceable back to the Hebrew word צבי tsvi "deer" and the German word Hirsch "deer"..
In his youth he wrote Eben Bochan, a commentary on several juridical themes of the Shulkhan Arukh, Choshen Mishpat, Sefer Moznayim la-Mishpat, a commentary, in three parts on the whole Choshen Mishpat. He wrote: Tzvi L'Tzadik glosses on the Shulkhan Arukh, Yoreh De'ah, published in the new Vilna edition of that work, he contributed to Hebrew magazines, as Ha-Maggid, Tziyyon, Ha-'Ibri, Ha-Lebanon. Inclined to philosophical speculation, Kalischer studied the systems of medieval and modern Jewish and Christian philosophers, one result being his Sefer Emunah Yesharah, an inquiry into Jewish philosophy and theology. In the midst of his many activities, his thoughts centered on one idea: the settlement of the Land of Israel by Jews, in order to provide a home for the homeless Eastern European Jews and transform the many Jewish beggars in the Holy Land into a population able to support itself by agriculture, he wrote in a Hebrew monthly magazine. In 1862 he published his book Derishat Tzion on this subject, including many quotes from his commentaries in the Ha-Levanon magazine.
He proposed: To collect money for this purpose from Jews in all countries To buy and cultivate land in Israel To found an agricultural school, either in Israel itself or in France, To form a Jewish military guard for the security of the colonies. He thought the time favorable for the carrying out of this idea, as the sympathy of men like Isaac Moïse Crémieux, Moses Montefiore, Edmond James de Rothschild, Albert Cohn rendered the Jews politically influential. To these and similar Zionist ideals he gave expression in his Derishat Zion, containing three theses: The salvation of the Jews, promised by the Prophets, can come about only in a natural way — by self-help Immigration to Israel Admissibility of the observance of sacrifices in Jerusalem at the present day; the appendix contains an invitation to the reader to become a member of the colonization societies of Israel. The second part of the book is devoted to speaking to "the nations" who believe in the Bible and the prophets, persuading them, that this new course in history is a logical one, that they too can hope for the salvation of the Jewish nation as part of the salvation of the entire world.
This book made a great impression in Eastern Europe. It was translated into German by Poper, a second Hebrew edition was issued by N. Friedland. Kalischer himself traveled with indefatigable zeal to various German cities for the purpose of establishing colonization societies, it was his influence that caused Chayyim Lurie, in Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1860, to form the first society of this kind, this was followed by others. Owing to Kalischer's agitation, the Alliance Israélite Universelle founded the Mikveh Israel agricultural school in Palestine in 1870, he was offered the rabbinate. Although all these endeavors were not attended with immediate success, Kalischer never lost hope. By exerting a strong influence upon his contemporaries, including such prominent men as Heinrich Grätz, Moses Hess, others, he is considered to have been one of the most important of those who prepared the way for the foundation of modern Zionism. Allg. Zeit. des Jud. 1874, p. 757. S. M. Sc; this article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Isidore.
"article name needed". The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. Jewish Encyclopedia article on Tzebi Hirsch Kalischer The personal papers of Zvi Hirsch Kalischer are kept at the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem; the notation of the record group is A9\54-58. WZO jafi.org.il Proto-Zionism and Its Proto-Herzl: The Philosophy and Efforts of Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer
