19 Facts About Israel Eldad

Israel Eldad, was an Israeli Revisionist Zionist philosopher and member of the Jewish underground group Lehi in Mandatory Palestine.

Israel Eldad completed his doctorate on "The Voluntarism of Eduard von Hartmann, Based on Schopenhauer," but never took his rabbinical exams at the seminary.

Israel Eldad 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.

Israel Eldad worked in 1942 directly with Lehi founder Avraham Stern.

Israel Eldad wrote some of the speeches delivered in court by Lehi defendants.

Israel 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.

Israel Eldad continued his political and philosophical writing from Cell 18 of the hospital ward at the Jerusalem Central Prison.

Israel Eldad was critical of the IDF for not fighting harder to conquer Jerusalem's Old City, 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.

At one party meeting, Israel Eldad lectured on Sulam, Jacob's ladder.

Israel 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, Israel Eldad was made a lecturer at the Technion in Haifa.

Israel Eldad spent half of 1949 writing his memoirs, entitled Maaser Rishon.

In 1988, Eldad was awarded Tel Aviv's Bialik Prize for his contributions to Israeli thought.

Israel Eldad was buried on the Mount of Olives, at the foot of the grave of his mentor and friend, Uri Zvi Greenberg.

Eldad did not believe that the creation of the state of Israel was the goal of Zionism.

Israel Eldad considered the state a tool to be used in realizing the true goal of Zionism, which he called Malkhut Yisrael, "the Kingdom of Israel".

Israel Eldad steadfastly refused to give legitimacy to any Jewish presence in the Diaspora, which he felt was doomed to extinction.

Nonetheless, in his view of history, past generations of Jews in exile from the Land of Israel Eldad were not denigrated as passive sufferers, but were considered creative players in history.