Leon Pinsker was a physician, and Zionist activist.
14 Facts About Leon Pinsker
2.
Leon Pinsker was himself born in the town of Tomaszow Lubelski in the southeastern border region of the Kingdom of Poland, and educated in Odessa, where he studied law but was unable to practice because of restrictions on occupations available to Jews.
3.
Leon Pinsker was a supporter of equal rights under the law for Jews, but Pinsker's optimism was curtailed after the Odessa Pogroms.
4.
Leon Pinsker was the founder and leader of the Hovevei Zion, known as Hibbat Zion movement.
5.
Political disagreements between religious and secular factions of the Odessa Committee, and Ottoman restriction on Jewish emigration, prevented Leon Pinsker from resettling, and he died in Odessa in 1891.
6.
Leon Pinsker's remains were later brought to Jerusalem in 1934.
7.
Leon Pinsker inherited a strong sense of Jewish identity from his father, Simchah Pinsker, a Hebrew language writer, scholar and teacher.
8.
Leon Pinsker attended his father's private school in Odessa and was one of the first Jews to attend Odessa University, where he studied law.
9.
Leon Pinsker believed that the Jewish problem could be resolved if the Jews attained equal rights.
10.
The Odessa pogrom of 1871 moved Leon Pinsker to become an active public figure.
11.
Leon Pinsker's visit to Western Europe led to his famous pamphlet Auto-Emancipation, subtitled Mahnruf a seine Stammgenossen, von einem russischen Juden, which he published anonymously in German on 1 January 1882, and in which he urged the Jewish people to strive for independence and national consciousness.
12.
Leon Pinsker became one of the founders and a chairman of the Hovevei Zion movement, with the backing of Baron Edmond James de Rothschild.
13.
Leon Pinsker headed this charity organization, known as the Odessa Committee.
14.
Leon Pinsker's remains were brought to Jerusalem in 1934 and reburied in Nicanor's Cave next to Mount Scopus.