Israel Eldad () (11 November 1910 – 22 January 1996), was an Israeli
Revisionist Zionist philosopher and member of the Jewish underground group
Lehi
Lehi (; he, לח"י – לוחמי חרות ישראל ''Lohamei Herut Israel – Lehi'', "Fighters for the Freedom of Israel – Lehi"), often known pejoratively as the Stern Gang,"This group was known to its friends as LEHI and to its enemie ...
in
Mandatory Palestine
Mandatory Palestine ( ar, فلسطين الانتدابية '; he, פָּלֶשְׂתִּינָה (א״י) ', where "E.Y." indicates ''’Eretz Yiśrā’ēl'', the Land of Israel) was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 ...
.
Biography
Israel Scheib (later Eldad) was born in 1910 in
Pidvolochysk
Pidvolochysk ( uk, Підволочиськ, pl, Podwołoczyska, yi, Podvolitchisk, , russian: Подволочиск) is an urban-type settlement in Ternopil, Ternopil Oblast (province) of western Ukraine. It is situated on the right side of t ...
,
Galicia
Galicia may refer to:
Geographic regions
* Galicia (Spain), a region and autonomous community of northwestern Spain
** Gallaecia, a Roman province
** The post-Roman Kingdom of the Suebi, also called the Kingdom of Gallaecia
** The medieval King ...
in a traditional Jewish home. The Scheibs wandered as refugees
during the First World War. In 1918, in
Lvov, young Scheib witnessed a funeral procession for Jews murdered in a pogrom. After high school, Scheib enrolled at the Rabbinical Seminary of Vienna for religious studies and the
University of Vienna for secular studies. He completed his doctorate on "The Voluntarism of Eduard von Hartmann, Based on
Schopenhauer," but never took his rabbinical exams at the seminary.
Meanwhile, he attended, with his father, a protest demonstration in front of the local British Consulate following the
1929 Arab riots
The 1929 Palestine riots, Buraq Uprising ( ar, ثورة البراق, ) or the Events of 1929 ( he, מאורעות תרפ"ט, , ''lit.'' Events of 5689 Anno Mundi), was a series of demonstrations and riots in late August 1929 in which a longst ...
in Palestine. The next year he read a poem by
Uri Zvi Greenberg, "I'll Tell It to a Child," about a messiah who cannot redeem his people because they are not ready to accept redemption. Two or three years later, Scheib met Greenberg at a speech Greenberg was giving entitled “The Land of Israel Is in Flames.”
Pedagogic and academic career 1937-1939
Scheib's first job after graduation was high school teaching in Volkovisk. Scheib joined the staff of the Teachers Seminary in
Vilna in 1937 while this city was part of
Poland, where he stayed for two years.
Zionist activism
In Poland
During that time he rose in the
Betar
The Betar Movement ( he, תנועת בית"ר), also spelled Beitar (), is a Revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, by Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky. Chapters sprang up across Europe, even during World War II. After t ...
ranks to the position of regional staff officer. In 1938, at the Third Betar Conference in Warsaw, when the Revisionist leader
Ze'ev Jabotinsky attacked the militant stance of Poland's Betar leader
Menachem Begin
Menachem Begin ( ''Menaḥem Begin'' (); pl, Menachem Begin (Polish documents, 1931–1937); ''Menakhem Volfovich Begin''; 16 August 1913 – 9 March 1992) was an Israeli politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of Israel. B ...
, Scheib spoke in Begin's defense.
The next year, when the Second World War broke out, Scheib and Begin escaped together from Warsaw. Begin was arrested by the Soviet police in the middle of a chess game with Scheib, and it was several years before their next encounter.
Eldad
immigrated to
Mandatory Palestine
Mandatory Palestine ( ar, فلسطين الانتدابية '; he, פָּלֶשְׂתִּינָה (א״י) ', where "E.Y." indicates ''’Eretz Yiśrā’ēl'', the Land of Israel) was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 ...
in 1941.
Leader of Lehi in Mandatory Palestine
Eladad and Begin met again in British-ruled Mandatory Palestine, where Scheib was already a leader of the Lehi underground and Begin would soon command the
Irgun. The Lehi was at that point waging a violent struggle for freedom from British rule and the Irgun would, under Begin, soon join the revolt in hopes of turning Palestine into a Jewish state.
Scheib adopted several aliases while living underground, including "Sambatyon" and "Eldad". He worked in 1942 directly with Lehi founder
Avraham Stern
Avraham Stern ( he, אברהם שטרן, ''Avraham Shtern''), alias Yair ( he, יאיר; December 23, 1907 – February 12, 1942) was one of the leaders of the Jewish paramilitary organization Irgun. In September 1940, he founded a breakaway m ...
. After Stern's killing by the British, Eldad became one of a triumvirate of Lehi commanders, working together with
Natan Yellin-Mor and future prime minister
Yitzhak Shamir.
[Moshe and Tova Svorai, ''Me'Etzel Le'Lechi'', 1989, pp. 419-422 (Hebrew) and Israel Eldad, ''Maaser Rishon'', pp. 133-145 (Hebrew)] Yellin-Mor was the diplomatic "foreign minister," Shamir the operations man, and Eldad the ideologue. For the next six years Eldad wrote articles for various underground newspapers, some of which he edited. Eldad also wrote some of the speeches delivered in court by Lehi defendants.
[
]
Eldad was arrested by the British when trying to flee from a Tel Aviv apartment; he was injured in a fall from a water pipe, and imprisoned in Jerusalem in a body cast. He continued his political and philosophical writing from Cell 18 of the hospital ward at the Jerusalem Central Prison. Eventually, in June 1946, Eldad healed enough to escape while on a visit in a dentist's clinic, from which several Lehi fighters spirited him away.
During the 1948 War
During the 1948 Palestine war
The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. It is known in Israel as the War of Independence ( he, מלחמת העצמאות, ''Milkhemet Ha'Atzma'ut'') and ...
, Eldad continued to be active as a co-leader of Lehi. Acting in this role, Eldad participated in September 1948 in ordering the assassination of Folke Bernadotte, a United Nations mediator, as he subsequently admitted.[
During the war Eldad was critical of Menachem Begin's Irgun for them, as he thought, not fighting against the Israel Defence Forces during the ]Altalena Affair
The ''Altalena'' Affair was a violent confrontation that took place in June 1948 by the newly created Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; he, צְבָא הַהֲגָנָה לְיִשְׂרָאֵל , ), alternatively ref ...
. He was also critical of the IDF for not fighting harder to conquer Jerusalem's Old City
The Old City of Jerusalem ( he, הָעִיר הָעַתִּיקָה, translit=ha-ir ha-atiqah; ar, البلدة القديمة, translit=al-Balda al-Qadimah; ) is a walled area in East Jerusalem.
The Old City is traditionally divided into ...
, and critical of Lehi fighters who did not rush to fight in Jerusalem. Towards the end of the war, Eldad disguised himself as a foreign journalist in order to sneak past Israeli military roadblocks and join the battle for Jerusalem.
Political career
The Lehi veterans organized politically as the Fighters' List. The party won one seat in the election for the First Knesset and dissolved afterwards. At one party meeting, Eldad lectured on ''Sulam'', Jacob's ladder (based on , where Jacob dreams of a ladder uniting heaven and earth).
Eldad taught Bible and Hebrew literature in an Israeli high school until Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion intervened and had him dismissed. Ben-Gurion was afraid Eldad would imbue the students with his Lehi ideology. Eldad went to court and won, but found few people willing to hire him after Ben-Gurion had labeled him a danger to the state.
In 1962, Eldad was made a lecturer at the Technion in Haifa. He taught there for twenty years. Starting from 1982 Eldad was a lecturer at the Ariel University Center of Samaria.
Literary career
For 14 years he published a revolutionary journal, ''Sulam''. Eldad spent half of 1949 writing his memoirs, entitled ''Maaser Rishon''. He wrote histories of underground battles, a biography of the mayor of Ramat Gan, a newspaper-style review of Jewish history called ''Chronicles'', a book of Bible commentary, ''Hegionot Mikra'', weekly newspaper columns, and many more books, encyclopedia entries and other works. In 1988, Eldad was awarded Tel Aviv's Bialik Prize for his contributions to Israeli thought.
By the 1990s, Eldad was known as the doyen of Israeli nationalists. Much of his work has been translated into English, mostly by Zev Golan Zev Golan ( he, זאב גולן) is an Israeli historian, author, and Senior Research Fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, where he was previously Director of the Public Policy Center. In the 1970s he was one of the world's foremost ...
. Among his works: ''Chronicles'' . ''The Jewish Revolution'' appeared in 1971, and was reissued in 2007. ''Free Jerusalem'' includes a chapter by Eldad ("Meanwhile, A European Interlude") about Polish Jewry on the eve of war. ''Israel: The Road to Full Redemption'', a translation of an article in ''Sulam'', was published in 1961 and is today a virtually unobtainable brochure. A website is devoted to disseminating articles by Eldad and his underground colleagues. His memoirs of the time he led the Lehi underground organisation, ''The First Tithe'', were translated and first published in 2008. ''God, Man and Nietzsche'' includes a lengthy examination of Eldad's philosophy of history and excerpts from an article about Nietzsche written by Eldad in the underground.
When he died on the first day of the Hebrew month of Shevat, in January 1996, his funeral was attended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Lehi commander and prime minister Yitzhak Shamir and Knesset Speaker Dov Shilansky
Dov Shilansky ( he, דב שילנסקי, 21 March 1924 – 9 December 2010) was an Israeli lawyer, politician and Speaker of the Knesset from 1988 to 1992.
Biography
Dov Shilansky (born Berelis Šilianskis) was born in Šiauliai, Lithuania. He ...
. Eldad was buried on the Mount of Olives, at the foot of the grave of his mentor and friend, Uri Zvi Greenberg.
Views and opinions
The book ''Stern: The Man and His Gang'' by Zev Golan has a biography of Eldad and a detailed comparison of his political ideas and goals with those of other Lehi leaders.
Jewish state
Eldad did not believe that the creation of the state of Israel was the goal of Zionism. He considered the state a tool to be used in realizing the true goal of Zionism, which he called ''Malkhut Yisrael'', "the Kingdom of Israel". Eldad sought what he referred to as national redemption, meaning a sovereign Jewish kingdom in the biblical borders of Israel, with all the world's Jews living there, and the Jewish Temple rebuilt in Jerusalem.
Jewish diaspora
Eldad steadfastly refused to give legitimacy to any Jewish presence in the Diaspora
A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. Historically, the word was used first in reference to the dispersion of Greeks in the Hellenic world, and later Jews after ...
, which he felt was doomed to extinction. Nonetheless, in his view of history, past generations of Jews in exile from the Land of Israel
The Land of Israel () is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine (see also Isra ...
were not denigrated as passive sufferers, but were considered creative players in history.[Zev Golan, ''God, Man and Nietzsche'', p. 113]
Awards and recognition
* In 1977, Eldad was awarded the Tchernichovsky Prize for exemplary translation.
* In 1988, he was the co-recipient (jointly with Zvi Meir Rabinovitz) of the Bialik Prize for Jewish thought.
* In 1990, he received the Yakir Yerushalayim (Worthy Citizen of Jerusalem) award from the city of Jerusalem.[ City of Jerusalem official website]
Many of Eldad's political and philosophical teachings continue to be espoused by the Magshimey Herut (achievers of liberty) organization, the Zionist Freedom Alliance
The Zionist Freedom Alliance (ZFA) is a Zionist movement that advocates Israel's Natural rights, moral, legal and historic rights for the Jewish people to the entire Land of Israel, which they consider to include the territory captured during the ...
, and by the Hatikva
Hatikvah ( he, הַתִּקְוָה, haTīqvā, ; ) is the national anthem of the State of Israel. Part of 19th-century Jewish poetry, the theme of the Romantic composition reflects the 2,000-year-old desire of the Jewish people to return ...
political party, the latter one led by Eldad's son Aryeh. The Israeli settlement
Israeli settlements, or Israeli colonies, are civilian communities inhabited by Israeli citizens, overwhelmingly of Jewish ethnicity, built on lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. The international community considers Israeli se ...
Kfar Eldad
Kfar Eldad ( he, כְּפַר אֶלְדָּד) is an Israeli settlement and a community settlement in the West Bank, south of Jerusalem. It is administered by the Gush Etzion Regional Council. The settlement is in the vicinity of Herodium and over ...
was named after him.
Published works
* ''The Jewish Revolution: Jewish Statehood'' (Israel: Gefen Publishing House, 2007),
* ''Maaser Rishon''. Originally published in 1950 in Hebrew. English translation: ''The First Tithe'' (Tel Aviv: Jabotinsky Institute, 2008),
* ''Israel: The Road to Full Redemption'' (New York: Futuro Press, 1961)
See also
* List of Bialik Prize recipients
The Bialik Prize is an annual literary award given by the municipality of Tel Aviv, Israel, for significant accomplishments in Hebrew literature. The prize is named in memory of Israel's national poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik
Hayim Nahman Bialik ...
References
Further reading
* Ada Amichal Yevin, ''Sambatyon'' (Israel: Bet El, 1995) (Hebrew)
* Zev Golan, ''Free Jerusalem: Heroes, Heroines and Rogues Who Created the State of Israel'' (Israel: Devora, 2003),
* Zev Golan, ''God, Man and Nietzsche: A Startling Dialogue between Judaism and Modern Philosophers'' (New York: iUniverse, 2007),
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eldad, Israel
1910 births
1996 deaths
20th-century Israeli philosophers
Jewish philosophers
Israeli philosophers
Philosophers of Judaism
Modern Hebrew writers
Zionist activists
Lehi (militant group)
Polish emigrants to Mandatory Palestine
20th-century Israeli Jews
Jews from Galicia (Eastern Europe)
People from Pidvolochysk
University of Vienna alumni
Burials at the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives
Betar members