Akademik

(formerly Shimshelevitz)

(1884-1963)

   Israel's second president. Born in Poltava, Ukraine, Russia, on 6 December 1884, he was educated at a heder and then at a Russian gymnasium. He joined Zionist groups and in 1904 made his first visit to Palestine and helped to found the Poalei Zion (Zionist Social Democrats) Party. He entered Kiev University in 1905, but then strikes closed down the university for that year. During the pogroms of November 1905, he participated in Jewish self-defense groups in Poltava. In 1906, he was among the participants at the first meeting of Poalei Zion of Russia. In June 1906, while his family was imprisoned by Russian police for illegal possession of weapons, he escaped to Vilna, where he attempted to coordinate Poalei Zion activities in different countries. He settled in Palestine in 1907 and that same year was the Poalei Zion delegate to the eighth Zionist Congress at The Hague. He helped found the Hebrew socialist periodical Ahdut (Unity) in 1910. After his deportation from Palestine by the Ottomans, he traveled to New York and in 1915 founded the Heha-lutz Movement in America.

   During World War I, Ben Zvi and David Ben-Gurion organized a volunteer movement for Jewish battalions in the United States. Ben Zvi then served as a soldier in the Jewish Legion of the British Royal Fusiliers. After returning to Palestine in 1918, he was appointed to the Palestine Advisory Council in 1920 but resigned the following year after the Jaffa riots. He was one of the founders of the Histadrut in 1920. He joined the Vaad Leumi and remained a member until Israel was established as a state. He was a member of the Knesset from 1948 to 1952 and also served on the Jerusalem Municipal Council. A signer of Israel's Declaration of Independence, Ben Zvi was elected to the first Knesset in 1949 and to the second Knesset in 1951. After Chaim Weizmann's death, he was elected president in 1952 and reelected in 1957. In 1962, he was elected for a third term but died in office in April 1963. As president, he encouraged intellectual gatherings at his residence to discuss literary, academic, and artistic concerns.