HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Arthur Ruppin (1 March 1876 – 1 January 1943) was a German
Zionist Zionism ( he, צִיּוֹנוּת ''Tsiyyonut'' after ''Zion'') is a nationalist movement that espouses the establishment of, and support for a homeland for the Jewish people centered in the area roughly corresponding to what is known in Je ...
proponent of pseudoscientific race theory and one of the founders of the city of
Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...
.Todd Samuel Presner, ’German Jewish Studies in the Digital Age:Remarks on Discipline, Method nand Media,' in William Collins Donahue, Martha B. Helfer (eds.)
Nexus: Essays in German Jewish Studies
Volume 1, Camden House, 2011 pp.7-25 p.22 n.10
Appointed director of Berlin's Bureau for Jewish statistics (''Büro für Statistik der Juden'') in 1904, he moved to Palestine in 1907, and from 1908 was the director of the Palestine Office of the Zionist Organization in
Jaffa Jaffa, in Hebrew Yafo ( he, יָפוֹ, ) and in Arabic Yafa ( ar, يَافَا) and also called Japho or Joppa, the southern and oldest part of Tel Aviv-Yafo, is an ancient port city in Israel. Jaffa is known for its association with the b ...
, organizing Zionist immigration to Palestine. In 1926, Ruppin joined the faculty of the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...
and founded the Department for the Sociology of the Jews. Described posthumously as the "founder of German-Jewish demography" and "father of Israeli sociology", his best known sociological work was ''The Jews in the Modern World'' (1934).


Biography

Arthur Ruppin was born in
Rawicz Rawicz (; german: Rawitsch) is a town in west-central Poland with 21,398 inhabitants as of 2004. It is situated in the Greater Poland Voivodeship (since 1999); previously it was in Leszno Voivodeship (1975–1998). It is the capital of Rawicz C ...
in the
German Empire The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...
(today in Poland). The family moved to
Magdeburg Magdeburg (; nds, label=Low Saxon, Meideborg ) is the capital and second-largest city of the German state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is situated at the Elbe river. Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archdiocese of Magdebur ...
when he was 11, and there followed a period of slow decline in the family's prosperity. A fifteen, his family's poverty forced him to leave school, where he was regarded as an extremely gifted pupil, in order to work to support them. Though he disliked commerce, he proved to be an extremely able merchant in the
grain trade The grain trade refers to the local and international trade in cereals and other food grains such as wheat, barley, maize, and rice. Grain is an important trade item because it is easily stored and transported with limited spoilage, unlike other ...
. Nonetheless, he was able to complete his studies in law and economics, and came second place in a prize competition established by the
Krupp Steelworks The Krupp steelworks, or Krupp foundry, or Krupp cast steel factory (German: 'Guss+stahl+fabrik'' in Essen is a historic industrial site of the Ruhr area of North Rhine-Westphalia in western Germany that was known as the "weapons forge of th ...
concerning the uses of
Social Darwinism Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in We ...
in industry. While at the university, Ruppin accepted the crude racial views of his age, including the idea that Jews were an inferior race, whose liabilities as a group could only be overcome by assimilation, outbreeding with Germans and Slavs. By the early 1900s, however, he began to think of himself as a Jew and take a more positive view: Jews could be regenerated not by outbreeding with Slavs and Germans, but rather by reconstituting themselves as a separate nation, as Zionism proposed. As he confided to his diary at this time, ''Zionism or complete assimilation:
tertium non datur In logic, the law of excluded middle (or the principle of excluded middle) states that for every proposition, either this proposition or its negation is true. It is one of the so-called three laws of thought, along with the law of noncontradi ...
''.


Zionist activism

Ruppin joined the
Zionist Organization The World Zionist Organization ( he, הַהִסְתַּדְּרוּת הַצִּיּוֹנִית הָעוֹלָמִית; ''HaHistadrut HaTzionit Ha'Olamit''), or WZO, is a non-governmental organization that promotes Zionism. It was founded as the ...
(ZO, the future World Zionist Organization – WZO) in 1905. In 1907 he was sent by
David Wolffsohn David Wolffsohn ( yi, דוד וואלפסאן; he, דוד וולפסון; 9 October 1855 in Darbėnai, Kovno Governorate – 15 September 1914) was a Lithuanian-Jewish businessman, prominent early Zionist and second president of the Zion ...
, the President of the ZO, to study the condition of the
Yishuv Yishuv ( he, ישוב, literally "settlement"), Ha-Yishuv ( he, הישוב, ''the Yishuv''), or Ha-Yishuv Ha-Ivri ( he, הישוב העברי, ''the Hebrew Yishuv''), is the body of Jewish residents in the Land of Israel (corresponding to the s ...
(the Jewish community in
Palestine __NOTOC__ Palestine may refer to: * State of Palestine, a state in Western Asia * Palestine (region), a geographic region in Western Asia * Palestinian territories, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank (including East ...
), then in the
Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...
, to investigate the possibilities for development of agriculture and industry. He reported on what he saw, which was distressing, and gave recommendations for improving the situation. In 1908 Ruppin came to live in Palestine by decision of the eighth
Zionist Congress The Zionist Congress was established in 1897 by Theodor Herzl as the supreme organ of the Zionist Organization (ZO) and its legislative authority. In 1960 the names were changed to World Zionist Congress ( he, הקונגרס הציוני העו ...
. He opened the Palestine Office of the Zionist Organization in
Jaffa Jaffa, in Hebrew Yafo ( he, יָפוֹ, ) and in Arabic Yafa ( ar, يَافَا) and also called Japho or Joppa, the southern and oldest part of Tel Aviv-Yafo, is an ancient port city in Israel. Jaffa is known for its association with the b ...
, with the aim of directing the settlement activities of the Zionist movement. His work made
Practical Zionism The principal common goal of Zionism was to establish a homeland for the Jewish people. Zionism was produced by various philosophers representing different approaches concerning the objective and path that Zionism should follow. Political Zion ...
possible and shaped the direction of the
Second Aliya The Second Aliyah ( he, העלייה השנייה, ''HaAliyah HaShniya'') was an aliyah (Jewish emigration to Palestine) that took place between 1904 and 1914, during which approximately 35,000 Jews immigrated into Ottoman-ruled Palestine, mo ...
, the last wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine before
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. Ruppin became the chief Zionist land agent. He helped to get a loan for
Ahuzat Bayit Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the ...
, later
Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...
, and acquired land on the
Carmel Carmel may refer to: * Carmel (biblical settlement), an ancient Israelite town in Judea * Mount Carmel, a coastal mountain range in Israel overlooking the Mediterranean Sea * Carmelites, a Roman Catholic mendicant religious order Carmel may also ...
, in
Afula Afula ( he, עפולה Arabic: العفولة) is a city in the Northern District of Israel, often known as the "Capital of the Valley" due to its strategic location in the Jezreel Valley. As of , the city had a population of . Afula's ancient ...
, in the
Jezreel Valley The Jezreel Valley (from the he, עמק יזרעאל, translit. ''ʿĒmeq Yīzrəʿēʿl''), or Marj Ibn Amir ( ar, مرج ابن عامر), also known as the Valley of Megiddo, is a large fertile plain and inland valley in the Northern Distr ...
, and in
Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
. Ruppin was instrumental in shaping the nature of Jewish settlement in Palestine and in changing the paradigm of settlement from those of plantation owners and poor laborers to the collective and cooperative
kibbutz A kibbutz ( he, קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming h ...
im and
moshav A moshav ( he, מוֹשָׁב, plural ', lit. ''settlement, village'') is a type of Israeli town or settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists between 1904 an ...
im that became the backbone of the state-in-the-making. He catalyzed the commune at
Sejera Ilaniya ( he, אִילָנִיָּה) is a moshav in northern Israel. Also known as Sejera, after the adjacent Arab village al-Shajara, it was the first Jewish settlement in the Lower Galilee and played an important role in the Jewish settlement ...
, and helped building the first kibbutz – Degania, as well as helping to support and organize Kinneret, Merhavia and other settlements. Later, he supported
Yehoshua Hankin Yehoshua Hankin ( he, יהושע חנקין, 1864 – 11 November 1945) was a Zionist activist who was responsible for most of the major land purchases of the Zionist Organization in Ottoman Palestine and Mandatory Palestine – in particular for ...
in his purchases of large tracts of land in the
Galilee Galilee (; he, הַגָּלִיל, hagGālīl; ar, الجليل, al-jalīl) is a region located in northern Israel and southern Lebanon. Galilee traditionally refers to the mountainous part, divided into Upper Galilee (, ; , ) and Lower Galil ...
. Ruppin was among the founders of the Brit Shalom
peace movement A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals, such as the ending of a particular war (or wars) or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world peac ...
, which supported a binational state, but he left Brit Shalom after the
1929 Hebron massacre The Hebron massacre refers to the killing of sixty-seven or sixty-nine Jews on 24 August 1929 in Hebron, then part of Mandatory Palestine, by Arabs incited to violence by rumors that Jews were planning to seize control of the Temple Mount in ...
. Thereafter he was convinced that only an independent
Jewish state In world politics, Jewish state is a characterization of Israel as the nation-state and sovereign homeland of the Jewish people. Modern Israel came into existence on 14 May 1948 as a polity to serve as the homeland for the Jewish people. It ...
would be possible, and he believed that the way to bring about that state was through continued settlement. He headed the
Jewish Agency The Jewish Agency for Israel ( he, הסוכנות היהודית לארץ ישראל, translit=HaSochnut HaYehudit L'Eretz Yisra'el) formerly known as The Jewish Agency for Palestine, is the largest Jewish non-profit organization in the world. ...
between 1933 and 1935, and helped to settle the large numbers of Jewish immigrants from
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
who came in that period. Ruppin exercised considerable influence in the cultural formation of East European Jews who performed
aliyah Aliyah (, ; he, עֲלִיָּה ''ʿălīyyā'', ) is the immigration of Jews from Jewish diaspora, the diaspora to, historically, the geographical Land of Israel, which is in the modern era chiefly represented by the Israel, State of Israel ...
and were to rise to positions of importance in later decades, such as
David Ben-Gurion David Ben-Gurion ( ; he, דָּוִד בֶּן-גּוּרִיּוֹן ; born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary national founder of the State of Israel and the first prime minister of Israel. Adopting the name ...
,
Itzhak Ben-Zvi Yitzhak Ben-Zvi ( he, יִצְחָק בֶּן־צְבִי‎ ''Yitshak Ben-Tsvi''; 24 November 188423 April 1963) was a historian, Labor Zionist leader and the longest-serving President of Israel. Biography Born in Poltava in the Russian Empire ...
, Joseph Shprinzak,
Berl Katznelson , birth_date = , birth_place = Babruysk, Russian Empire (now Belarus) , death_date = , death_place = Jerusalem , spouse = , partner = , party = Mapai , children = , kno ...
,
Yitzhak Tabenkin Yitzhak Tabenkin ( he, יצחק טבנקין, 8 January 1888 – 6 June 1971) was a Zionist activist and Israeli politician. He was one of the founders of the kibbutz Movement. Biography Yitzchak Tabenkin was born in Babruysk in the Russian Emp ...
,
Zalman Shazar Zalman Shazar ( he, זלמן שז"ר; born Shneur Zalman Rubashov; be, Шнэер За́льман Рубашо́ў; russian: Шне́ер За́лмен Рубашо́в; November 24, 1889 – October 5, 1974) was an Israeli politician, author ...
, and
Levi Eshkol Levi Eshkol ( he, לֵוִי אֶשְׁכּוֹל ;‎ 25 October 1895 – 26 February 1969), born Levi Yitzhak Shkolnik ( he, לוי יצחק שקולניק, links=no), was an Israeli statesman who served as the third Prime Minister of Israe ...
. Ruppin died in 1943. He was buried in
Degania Alef Degania Alef ( he, דְּגַנְיָה א', ) is a kibbutz in northern Israel. The Jewish communal settlement (''kvutza'') started off in 1910, making it the earliest socialist Zionist farming commune in the Land of Israel. Its status as "the mo ...
.


Race theory

In terms of historic origins, Ruppin believed that early Jews were a non-Semitic agricultural people, living in Palestine down to the destruction of the
First Temple Solomon's Temple, also known as the First Temple (, , ), was the Temple in Jerusalem between the 10th century BC and . According to the Hebrew Bible, it was commissioned by Solomon in the United Kingdom of Israel before being inherited by th ...
. Thereafter they began to intermarry with the surrounding Semitic peoples and thereby compromised and weakened their racial purity. It was the infusion of Semitic blood, he held, that seduced Jews from working land and, instead, led them to concentrate on commerce, a transformation which, he thought, accounted for the 'greed' later prejudice attributed to Jews. Ruppin considered assimilation as the worst threat to the existence of Jews as people, and argued for a concentration of Jews in a common area, to be realized by the colonisation of Palestine, where they would be protected from the assimilationist tendencies in Europe, as he explained in his book ''The Jews of the Present''" (''Die Juden der Gegenwart'' in German), especially in its second, largely-amended, edition. Ruppin accepted the idea of a division of humankind into three important races of humans, the "white", "yellow" and "black" and considered Jews to be part of the "white" race (page 213–214), and within this "race", which Ruppin divides in "Xantrochroe" (light colored) and "Melanochroe" (dark colored), to be part of the latter, actually mixture from the Arab and North African peoples and other West and South Asian peoples. Ruppin believed that realization of Zionism required "racial purity" of Jews and was inspired by works of anti-semitic thinkers, including some Nazis. Ruppin personally met
Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
's mentor, Hans F. K. Günther, one of many racist thinkers who greatly influenced Nazism. Specifically regarding Jews, Ruppin distinguished between "Racial Jews" and "Jewish types", and drew up a concept that divided Jews into "white, black and yellow" metaracial categories. His variables, later to prove influential in Israel, were worked out over a classification between
Ashkenazim Ashkenazi Jews ( ; he, יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכְּנַז, translit=Yehudei Ashkenaz, ; yi, אַשכּנזישע ייִדן, Ashkenazishe Yidn), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or ''Ashkenazim'',, Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation: , singu ...
,
Sephardim Sephardic (or Sephardi) Jews (, ; lad, Djudíos Sefardíes), also ''Sepharadim'' , Modern Hebrew: ''Sfaradim'', Tiberian: Səp̄āraddîm, also , ''Ye'hude Sepharad'', lit. "The Jews of Spain", es, Judíos sefardíes (or ), pt, Judeus sefar ...
, Babylonians, and "special types" who didn't fit into the former categories, namely such as Yemenites and Bukharans. He performed skull measurements and believed Ashkenazi Jews, whom he regarded as superior to, for example, Yemeni Jews, themselves comprised various racial subclasses, according to nasal structure. Despite these variations in their respective historic communities, Ruppin was convinced that Jews were distinguished by a special biological uniqueness. Ruppin wrote that Jewish race should be "purified", and he stated that "only the racially pure come to the land." After becoming head of the Palestine Office of the Zionist Executive (later the Jewish Agency for Israel), he argued against immigration of Ethiopian Jews because of their lack of "blood connection" and that
Yemenite Jews Yemenite Jews or Yemeni Jews or Teimanim (from ''Yehudei Teman''; ar, اليهود اليمنيون) are those Jews who live, or once lived, in Yemen, and their descendants maintaining their customs. Between June 1949 and September 1950, the ...
should be limited to menial labor. Due to the Holocaust, historiography in Israel usually played down or ignored altogether this aspect of Ruppin's life. According to
Raphael Falk Raphael Alexandrovich Falk (1856 – 1913) was a Russian chess master. He took 12th at Moscow 1899 (the 1st Russian Chess Championship, Mikhail Chigorin won), shared 1st with Goncharov in Moscow City Chess Championship in 1901, and tied for 5-7 ...
, Ruppin was convinced that Jews and Arabs comprised an alliance forged by common cultural and blood ties.
Ruppin Academic Center Ruppin Academic Center (), also known as Ruppin College, is a college in Israel, which has the status of an institutional settlement. It was established in 1949, is named after Arthur Ruppin, and is located near the moshav Kfar Monash, and withi ...
is named after Arthur Ruppin.


References


Notes


Citations


Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ruppin, Arthur 1876 births 1943 deaths German Ashkenazi Jews German emigrants to the Ottoman Empire Heads of the Jewish Agency for Israel Hebrew University of Jerusalem faculty Jewish sociologists Ashkenazi Jews in Mandatory Palestine Jews in Ottoman Palestine People from the Province of Posen People from Rawicz Proponents of scientific racism