Syrkin, Nachman

Syrkin, Nachman
(1868–1924)
   A founder of Zionist socialism. From his student days Syrkin, who came from Byelorussia, started developing original theories reconciling Marxism and Zionism. They were set out in 1898 in a booklet called ‘The Jewish Problem and the Socialist Jewish State’. He and a small group of delegates propounded these views at the early Zionist congresses, and sharply attacked the ‘bourgeois’ leadership. Syrkin’s small, bearded figure became a focus for angry polemics.
   Unlike his left-wing Jewish contemporaries in the Bund, Syrkin saw internationalism as a still distant vision. The Jews needed to go through the historic stage of the nation-state. But Zionism had to be based on social justice. In the society he contemplated, the land would be state-owned; both agricultural and industrial production would be carried on in large workers’ co-operatives; and the capital would come from national sources. In this way, the class war would be superseded. A Jewish commonwealth could be created only by mass migration from Eastern Europe to Palestine, where a ‘proletariat of shopkeepers, peddlers, tailors and shoemakers’ would become productive workers. Syrkin propagated his solution by speeches, pamphlets and articles in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, German and English and poured scorn on all other approaches to Zionism.
   After HERZL’S death, Syrkin left the Zionist ranks in disillusionment, and for some years associated himself with the Territorialist movement (see Israel ZANGWILL) that sought a Jewish area for settlement elsewhere than in Palestine. In 1904 he was banished from Germany as a revolutionary. After living in Paris and for a while in Russia, he settled in the United States in 1907. The Young Turk revolution of 1908 revived his hopes, and he returned to the Labour Zionist movement. By this time, an organized Poale Zion (‘Workers of Zion’) party had been established, largely due to the zeal of a younger man, Ber BOROCHOV. Syrkin became a leader of that party in America. In 1919, he was a member of the American Jewish delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference. In the same year, he played a prominent role in the World Conference of Poale Zion in Stockholm and headed the study commission that formulated the principles and programme of the movement. He died in New York in 1925. Sixteen years later his remains were reinterred in the kibbutz of Kinneret on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. His name is carried by the village of Kfar Syrkin and several streets in Israel towns. A biography was published in 1961, written by his daughter Marie Syrkin, herself one of the leading American exponents of Labour Zionism.

Who’s Who in Jewish History after the period of the Old Testament. . 2012.

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  • SYRKIN, NACHMAN — (1868–1924), first ideologist and leader of Socialist Zionism. Born in Mogilev, Belorussia,   Syrkin received a thorough Jewish education by private tutors, and when he moved with his family to Minsk (1884), he completed his studies at a Russian… …   Encyclopedia of Judaism

  • Syrkin, Nachman — (1868 1924)    American leader of Socialist Zionism. He was born in Mohilev, Belorussia. In 1907 he settled in New York and became active in Zionist work; he also contributed to Yiddish journals. During World War I he helped to establish the… …   Dictionary of Jewish Biography

  • Syrkin — Nachman Syrkin (* 1868 in Weißrussland; † 1924 in den USA) war Begründer und Führer des sozialistischen Zionismus (als solcher Erfinder des kooperativen / kollektiven Siedlungsbaus) sowie produktiver Autor und Verbreiter seiner Ideen in… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Nachman Syrkin — (or Nahman Syrkin or Nahum Syrkin; b. 11 February 1868; d. 6 September 1924) was a political theorist, founder of Labour Zionism and a prolific writer in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, German and English language. Born in the Russian Empire (now… …   Wikipedia

  • Nachman Syrkin — (* 11. Februarjul./ 23. Februar 1868greg. in Mahiljou, Russisches Reich; † 6. September 1924 in New York) war Begründer und Führer des sozialistischen Zionismus (als solcher Erfinder des kollektiven Siedlungsbaus) sowie Publizist… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • SYRKIN, MARIE — (1899–1989), U.S. writer, translator, educator, and Zionist activist. Syrkin was born in Berne, Switzerland, the only daughter of nachman syrkin (1868–1924), theoretician of socialist Zionism, and Bassya Osnos, a feminist socialist Zionist who… …   Encyclopedia of Judaism

  • KEFAR SYRKIN — (Heb. כְּפַר סִירְקִין), moshav in the Coastal Plain of Israel, E. of Petaḥ Tikvah; affiliated to Tenu at ha Moshavim; founded in 1936 by veteran agricultural laborers, who were soon joined by immigrants from Germany and other countries. In 1968 …   Encyclopedia of Judaism

  • TERRITORIALISM — Jewish movements in the 20th century aiming to establish an autonomous settlement of Jews in a sufficiently   large territory in which the predominant majority of the population shall be Jewish. In contrast to Zionism, Territorialism regarded… …   Encyclopedia of Judaism

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  • Zionist — Als Zionismus (von Zion) wird die jüdische Nationalbewegung bezeichnet, die sich infolge des Antisemitismus in Europa um 1880 politisch zu organisieren begann und einen eigenen jüdischen Nationalstaat in Palästina anstrebte. Der jüdische… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

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