A walk through Mazkeret Batya

Rabbi Samuel Mohilever (1824-1898) - the rabbi of the Hovevei Zion

 

Rabbi Samuel Mohilever was a rabbi who lived in the Russian Empire and who moved against the tide for an orthodox rabbi of those times in being heavily involved in Zionist activities. He also encouraged secular Jewish education and engaging in economic activities.

 

He was born in what is now Hlybokaye in Belarus and was recognized as a child prodigy in Talmudic studies. He studied in the famed Valozhyn Yeshiva and by aged 18 was ordained a rabbi after only 6 months of study. By then he was already married (as was the custom in those days). He did not wish to live off Torah and went into the linen trade. However, after 4 years he relented and accepted the position as rabbinic leader of his home town. He subsequently moved on to rabbinic positions in larger communities.

 

During his first year as a rabbi in Suwalki he befriended an activist who had formed the first group of Hovevei Zion (lovers of Zion). This movement Hibbat Zion would spread throughout Central and Eastern Europe (Its participants were called Hovevei Zion and the movement was Hibbat Zion). The years of 1881 to 1882 were a time of pogroms in Russia, and this occasioned emigration from Eastern Europe, primarily to America. Rabbi Mohilever travelled extensively in the Russian empire encouraging immigration to then Palestine. He joined with Leon Pinsker in consolidating the activities of the many groups of Hovevei Zion/Hibbat Zion. As part of his fundraising activities, he met with Baron Edmond de Rothschild and succeeded in obtaining his support for a new settlement in Palestine. This would be called Ekron. Especially when he took up a rabbinic position in Radom, he took a leadership role in Hibbat Zion and became its honorary president.

 

His approach to Zionism was unique for that time. He was much influenced by the ideas of Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer and believed that the Jewish people were at the beginning of redemptive and messianic times. He had no problem in working with non-religious people in pursuit of Zionist goals and was able to work amicably with the secularist Leon Pinsker, who was chairman of the organization.

 

In many respects, his ideas foreshadowed those of Rabi Avraham Kook, who also was influenced by the ideas of Haskalah, who also believed that he was living in redemptive and messianic times, and who saw non-orthodox Jews as essential partners in Jewish redemption. He thus strongly disagreed with orthodox rabbis of that time who wanted nothing to do with the Zionist enterprise because of its non-orthodox participation and leadership and hence its non-messianic beginnings.

 

In 1890, at age 66, he made a trip to Palestine to see first-hand the activities of the Hovevei Zion. He travelled throughout the country, visiting established Jewish communities and the new Jewish settlements, including Ekron. He also participated in buying land for the new settlement of Rehovot.

 

He was the first orthodox rabbi to support the Zionist activities of Theodor Herzl, despite Herzl’s secular leaning. They communicated, and Herzl regarded Rabbi Joseph Mohilever as “the first political Zionist.” Rabbi Mohileger was invited to address the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, but was unable to attend because of his age and ill health. However, he sent his grandson, Rabbi Joseph Mohilever, who read out his grandfather’s speech. This included the following messianic aspirations: “But I say that our faith and hope, as ever, so now, is that our Messiah will come and gather in all the scattered of Israel and instead of being wanderers upon the face of the earth, ever moving from place to place, we shall dwell as a nation in our own country . . . We shall be the pride and honor of all the peoples of the earth. This is our faith and hope as foretold by our prophets and seers of blessed memory.” He regarded the steps that were being taken at that century as the first steps in the messianic redemption.

 

Towards the end of his life, and following differences with the secular leadership of Hibbat Zion, Rabbi Mohileger created a new organization, Mizrachi, that was intended to work among orthodox Jews and become the spiritual center of the Zionist movement. Mizrachi stands for merkaz ruchani or spiritual center and was the foundation of the Religious Zionist movement. This organization was refounded in 1901 by Rabbi Jacob Reines and other disciples of Rabbi Mohilever as part of the Zionist Organization.

 

Rabbi Mohileger was tangentially involved in a dispute that the villagers of Ekron had with the Baron.  At the time of their first shmitta year, the biblically mandated rest of the land every seventh year, the villagers insisted on not working the land, which was against the wishes of the Baron. He insisted that they follow the ruling of Rabbi Mohileger and others that the selling of the land to a non-Jew for the year was adequate. However, the villagers followed the ruling of the rabbis of Jerusalem that held this was not adequate, even though shmitta at this time was a rabbinic and not biblical mandate. The Baron cut them off for the year, but the relationship was patched up after the shmitta year.