12 Facts About Hillel Zeitlin

Hillel Zeitlin was an Ashkenazi Yiddish and Hebrew writer and poet.

Hillel Zeitlin was the leading thinker in the movement of pre-World War II "philosophical Neo-Hasidism".

Hillel Zeitlin was born in Korma, in the Mogilev Governorate of the Russian Empire, to a Hasidic Chabad family.

Hillel Zeitlin subsequently studied with the local Hasidic teacher and, for the last year before his bar mitzvah, at the court of the Hasidic rebbe in the town of Rechitsa.

Hillel Zeitlin did not, for instance, hesitate to eulogize his former friend the great writer and thinker Yosef Haim Brenner, who was an ardent secularist.

Hillel Zeitlin quoted a wide variety of Hasidic sources, but did not live in a Hasidic community or identify with a particular Hasidic group.

Hillel Zeitlin endeavored to preserve what he called the "treasure" at the core of Hasidic teaching, and to make it accessible not only to Jews of his era but to non-Jews.

Hillel Zeitlin considered the core of Hasidim to consist of three "loves": love of God, of Torah, and of Israel.

Hillel Zeitlin grew close to the territorialist movement and lent his support to the "Uganda proposal".

Hillel Zeitlin was of the opinion that it would be impossible to settle in Palestine without removing the half a million Palestinian Arabs and so the Zionist proposals would fail.

Hillel Zeitlin was a practical territorialist and his writings took on more urgency after the notorious pogroms in Kishinev and Homel.

Hillel Zeitlin was murdered by Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto while holding a book of the Zohar and wrapped in a Tallit and Tefillin.