Early life Born in
Poltava in the
Russian Empire (today in
Ukraine), Yitzhak Ben-Zvi was the eldest son of
Zvi Shimshi (originally Shimshelevich), a writer and communal worker, and Karina (Atara), daughter of the rabbi Israel Leib Kupilevich. From his mother's side, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi was descended from Rabbi Meir Halevi Epstein. On his father's side, he traced his lineage back to Lithuanian Rabbi
Jehiel ben Solomon Heilprin, Rabbi Eliyahu Chaim Meisel of
Łódź, the
mekubal Rabbi Moshe Ashkenazi (known as Moshe Iwer), and ultimately to the renowned commentator
Rashi. His brothers were Moshe (who died aged 12 in March 1906), and the writer Aharon Reuveni. His sisters were the poet Shulamit Klogai and Dina, who married
Benjamin Mazar. Ben Zvi had a formal Jewish education at a
Poltava heder and then the local
Gymnasium. He completed his first year at
Kiev University studying
natural sciences before dropping out to dedicate himself to the newly formed Russian
Poale Zion which he co-founded with
Ber Borochov. Yitzhak Ben-Zvi's parents were banished to
Siberia following the discovery of a cache of weapons he had concealed in their home. In 1918, Ben-Zvi married
Rachel Yanait a fellow
Poale Zion activist. They had two sons: Amram and Eli. Eli died in the
1948 Arab–Israeli War, defending his
kibbutz,
Beit Keshet.
Poale Zion and Bar Giora in
Istanbul, 1913 Following
Borochov's arrest, March 1906, and subsequent exile in the United States, Ben Zvi became leader of the Russian Poale Zion. He moved their headquarters from Poltava to
Vilna and established a publishing house, the
Hammer, which produced the party's paper,
The Proletarian Idea. In April 1907, having been arrested twice and being under surveillance by the
Tzarist secret police, Ben-Zvi made
Aliyah. He traveled on forged papers. It was his second visit to
Palestine. On his arrival in
Jaffa he changed his name to Ben Zvi - Son of Zvi. He found the local Poale Zion divided and in disarray. Slightly older and more experienced than his comrades he took command and, the following month, organised a gathering of around 80 members. He and a
Rostovian - a strict
Marxist group from
Rostov - were elected as the new
Central Committee. Two of the party's founding principles were reversed:
Yiddish, not
Hebrew was to be the language used and the
Jewish and the
Arab proletariat should unite. It was agreed to publish a party journal in Yiddish -
Der Anfang. The conference also voted that Ben Zvi and
Israel Shochat should attend the 8th
World Zionist Congress in
The Hague. Once there they were generally ignored. They ran out of money on their return journey and had to work as porters in
Trieste. Back in Jaffa they held another gathering, 28 September 1907, to report on the Hague conference. On the first evening of the conference a group of nine men met in Ben Zvi's room where, swearing themselves to secrecy with Shochat as their leader, they agreed to set up an
underground military organisation -
Bar-Giora, named after
Simon Bar Giora. Its slogan was: "
Judea fell in blood and fire; Judea shall rise again in blood and fire." The following year Ben Zvi was one of the founding members of
Hashomer. In Jaffa Ben Zvi found work as a teacher. In 1909, he organized the
Gymnasia Rehavia high school in the
Bukhari quarter of
Jerusalem together with
Rachel Yanait. In spring of 1910 Poale Zion (Palestine) decided to launch a
Socialist Hebrew language periodical in Jerusalem. It was called Ha'ahdut and Ben Zvi persuaded Ben Gurion to join as proof reader and translator. The
Haredi community in Jerusalem refused to rent them rooms. At the Poale Zion conference held in April 1911, Ben Zvi announced his plan to move to capital of
Ottoman Empire,
Istanbul. He is firstly study to
Galatasaray High School and between years in 1912-1914
Istanbul University in Faculty of Law. By the following year many of the second Aliyah activists had gathered in the Ottoman capital, with Shochat, Ben Gurion,
Moshe Shertok,
David Remez,
Golda Lishansky,
Manya Wilbushewitch and
Joseph Trumpeldor all there. As Poale Zion's leading theoretician in 1912 he published a two part essay arguing that in certain circumstances Jewish national interests must take precedence over class solidarity and that Arab labourers should be excluded from
Moshavot and the Jewish sector.
During World War I ,
Yosef Haim Brenner; standing – A. Reuveni,
Ya'akov Zerubavel , Jerusalem, 1933. Also pictured are
Chaim Weizmann (sitting, second from left),
Haim Arlosoroff (sitting, center), and
Moshe Shertok (Sharett) (standing, right). , 1934 In 1915, despite calling on Jews to become Ottoman citizens and attempting to assemble a militia in Jerusalem to fight on the Ottoman side in the
First World War, both Ben Zvi and Ben Gurion were expelled to Egypt. From there they travelled to New York where they arrived wearing their
tarboushes. In America they set about recruiting members of Paole Zion to fight on the Ottoman side. When this failed he and Ben Gurion embarked on educating Paole Zion followers on the settlement projects in Palestine. This resulted in the publication of
Eretz Israel - Past and Present (1918) which ran to several editions, selling 25,000 copies. Initially Ben Zvi was to be co-editor but Ben Gurion ended up dominating all aspects and despite writing about a third Ben Zvi got little recognition. Ben-Zvi served in the
Jewish Legion (1st Judean battalion 'KADIMAH') together with Ben-Gurion. He helped found the
Ahdut HaAvoda party in 1919, and became increasingly active in the
Haganah. On returning to Palestine he married
Golda Lishansky who had remained in the country throughout the war.
Mandatory period In 1919 he was one of the founders of
Ahdut Ha'Avoda which he helped reshape as a non-
Marxist,
Social Democratic party, which joined the bourgeois
World Zionist Organization rather than the
Communist International. With his knowledge of the Arabic language Ben Zvi was in charge of policy towards the Arabs. In 1921 he published an essay titled
The Arab Movement focusing on Palestinian Arab Nationalism in which he attempted to "resolve the apparent contradiction between the long-term goal of Zionism—the creation in Palestine of a Jewish majority and state—and the fact that at present the overwhelming majority of Palestine's population was Arab". In the essay, Ben-Zvi argued that Arabs in Palestine did not constitute a unified national entity and that Palestinian Arab nationalism was essentially inauthentic, indirectly denying their right to self-determination. He further stated that there was no true Arab liberation movement among the Arab population in Palestine. Ben-Zvi asserted that the elite,
Effendi, class in Palestine were exploiting Palestinian peasants (
Fellahin), and as such, the Effendis had no popular support among the indigenous inhabitants. Zionism, Ben-Zvi concluded, was good for the Palestinian peasants since they are "interested in the expansion of employment and industry in the country and the improvement of the workers' lot, which of necessity results from Jewish settlement and immigration." He was head of the Poale Zion's Arab labor department, despite this he opposed a 1922 railway strike by Arab and Jewish workers in Haifa, and in 1923 he blocked a strike threatened by Arab workers in Jaffa and Lydda. Between 1925 and 1928 he produced an Arabic language Zionist bi-weekly newspaper called
Ittiḥād al-ʿUmmāl (Workers Unity). In 1926
Ahdut HaAvoda decided to cease all efforts at unionising Arab workers and that Arabs should be barred from joining the newly formed
Histadrut. In 1931 he became chair of
Va'ad Leumi. According to
Avraham Tehomi, Ben-Zvi ordered the 1924 murder of
Jacob Israël de Haan. De Haan had come to Palestine as an ardent
Zionist, but he had become increasingly critical of the Zionist organizations, preferring a negotiated solution to the armed struggle between the Jews and Arabs. This is how Tehomi acknowledged his own part in the murder over sixty years later, in an Israeli television interview in 1985: "I have done what the Haganah decided had to be done. And nothing was done without the order of Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. I have no regrets because he [de Haan] wanted to destroy our whole idea of Zionism."
Presidency After the death of
Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion proposed Yitzhak Ben-Zvi as the candidate for the presidency of the state at the party convention held on November 26, 1952. In a secret ballot, Ben-Zvi won over
Yosef Sprinzak by a margin of 14 votes. On December 8, 1952, Ben-Zvi was elected to the position, subsequently re-elected in 1957 and again in 1962, supported by 62 coalition members of the Knesset, with 42 opposition members abstaining. He was the only president to be elected for three terms, and during his second and third candidacies, he was the sole nominee without any opposition. During his tenure, he won the sympathy of all elements of the political spectrum. Yitzhak and Rachel Ben-Zvi declined to move from their residence on Ibn Gabirol Street in Jerusalem to a luxurious and representative mansion. Therefore, the Israeli government acquired the Ben-Yehuda family's property on 17 Alharizi Street for the President's Residence. At their home, they performed the traditional duties of the president. Each month, on the eve of the new month, representatives from diverse Jewish communities were welcomed. Throughout Ben-Zvi's tenure, delegates from Jewish communities spanning
North Africa,
Iran,
Bukhara,
Hungary,
Babylonia,
Romania,
Kurdistan,
Czechoslovakia,
Egypt,
Italy,
India,
Greece,
Bulgaria,
United Kingdom,
Ireland, and
Latin America visited in this capacity. As part of Rachel's official activities, the Rachel Ben-Zvi Foundation for Israeli Children was established. Ben-Zvi believed that the president should set an example for the public, and that his home should reflect the austerity of the times. For over 26 years, he and his family lived in a wooden hut in the
Rehavia neighborhood of Jerusalem. The State of Israel took interest in the adjacent house, built and owned by Nissim and Esther Valero, and purchased it after Nissim's death to provide additional space for the President's residence. Two larger wooden structures in the yard were used for official receptions. During Ben-Zvi's presidency, his residence was opened to the public twice a year, during the festivals of
Sukkot and
Independence Day. As part of the clemency powers vested in the president, Ben-Zvi was presented, among other things, with requests for clemency for defendants in trials of public interest, including
Adolf Eichmann and the killers of
Rezső Kasztner. Under the clemency powers, Ben-Zvi released all the accused in the
Kafr Qasim massacre. In 1958, President Ben-Zvi visited the
Kingdoms of the Netherlands and
Belgium at the invitation of their monarchs. In 1959, he made an official visit to
Burma, then Israel's only friend in Asia. In August 1962, Ben-Zvi embarked on a state tour of Africa, during which he visited the
Central African Republic and the
Republic of the Congo, signing cooperation agreements with them. Ben-Zvi used to participate in a weekly
Gemara lesson and refused to attend the opening celebrations of a
Reform synagogue in Jerusalem. Ben-Zvi died at the start of his third term on April 23, 1963. ==Research==