BARZILAI (Eisenstadt), YEHOSHUA

BARZILAI (Eisenstadt), YEHOSHUA (1855–1918), leader of the ?ibbat Zion movement and writer. Barzilai was born in Kletsk, Minsk region, Belorussia, to a rabbinical family, and from an early age became active in the ?ibbat Zion movement. He first visited Ere? Israel in 1887, but a year later returned to Russia, where he became one of the founders of the clandestine *Benei Moshe, which was led by *A?ad Ha-Am and became a center of modern spiritual and national thought. He was elected deputy member of the Odessa ?ovevei Zion Committee, which was then the central body for activities on behalf of the new settlements in Ere? Israel.

Barzilai returned to Ere? Israel in 1890 and was appointed secretary of the Executive Committee of ?ovevei Zion in Jaffa. He was instrumental in the founding of several educational and community institutions, wrote numerous articles and reports on life in the Yishuv in various Hebrew papers in Russia, and from 1893 to 1895 edited, jointly with Yehudah Grasovski (*Goor) Mikhtavim me-Ere? Yisrael (Letters from Ere? Israel), a bulletin on the life and problems of the Jewish community in Ere? Israel. He was also active on behalf of the settlers in their disputes with the administration of Baron Rothschild.

Barzilai joined the Zionist movement and participated in the Minsk Conference of Russian Zionists (1902). He was among the opponents of the Uganda Plan. From 1904, he was an official of the Anglo-Palestine Bank in Jerusalem and was one of the founders of the Hebrew Gymnasium in Jerusalem, the first modern high school in Ere? Israel, and the Beit Ha-Am community center of Jerusalem. At the beginning of World War i he returned to Europe, and after a long illness died in Lausanne, Switzerland. His remains were reinterred in 1933 on the Mount of Olives. A collection of his writings was published in 1912.

bibliography:

Tidhar, i, 150–1; M. Smilansky, Mishpa?at ha-Adamah, ii, 60–65; Rabbi Binyamin, Keneset ?akhamim (1961), 271–7

[Benjamin Jaffe]