Yitzchak Yaacov Reines - Zionism

Zionism

He was a member of the Hovevei Zion movement from its inception, Rabbi Yitzhak Reines joined Rabbi Samuel Mohilever in proposing settlement that Torah and labor. Mohilever coined the phrase: the Mercaz Ruchani (religious center) or in short Mizrachi. Ten years later, when Rabbi Reines was looking for a good name for a religious Zionist movement, he adopted the name.

Theodor Herzl recognized the need for rabbis to support the new Zionist movement and Reines was one of the first rabbis to answer Herzl's call to become part of the movement; as such, he attended the Third Zionist Congress (1899).

While most of his eastern and western European rabbinical colleagues remained opposed to political Zionism, in 1902 Reines published a book, Or Hadash al Tzion (" New Light on Zion") which presents a call to a Zionist Judaism including a call to all include all Jews, economic productivity and training, and a renewed Judaism in thought, emotion, and action.

He believed that whereas medieval Jews saw the Divine hand in nature, contemporary Jews see the Divine hand in history especially surviving the exile to return to modern Zion. He commissioned Zev Yaavetz to write an appropriate Jewish history work to use for education.

The same year, he organized a conference of the religious Zionist movement in Vilna, where the Mizrachi movement was founded. He was recognized as the movement's leader at its founding convention in Pressburg (today's Bratislava, Slovakia) in 1904.

In 1905, Reines accomplished his own personal dream, with the establishment of a yeshiva in Lida where both secular and religious subjects were taught.

At the fifth Zionist congress, the Swiss and radical student faction threatened to turn the movement in a direction which would lead away from religion. In contrast, Reines’ Mizrahi branch became the strongest branch of the Zionist organization in Russia. He supported the British Uganda Program as temporary measure to save Jews.

Reines was succeeded by Judah Leib Fishman, a preacher (maggid) and rabbi who met Rabbi Reines in 1900 and took part in the movement's founding conference in Vilna. He participated in the second and subsequent Zionist congresses and was a member of the Zionist General Council. Fishman, who changed his name to Maimon, settled in Israel in 1913.