Motzkin, Leo

(1867–1933)

   Russian Zionist leader. Motzkin showed an early aptitude for mathematics and was sent from his Ukraine home to Berlin to pursue his studies. But he was diverted from what might have been a brilliant academic career by becoming immersed in Zionist affairs as a student. One of the outstanding younger Russian delegates to the First Zionist Congress in 1897, he was sent by HERZL on a mission to Palestine to report on the condition of the Jewish agricultural settlements. He later joined the Democratic Faction, the Russian opposition to Herzl.

   With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Motzkin was appointed to head the Copenhagen office of the Zionist Organization, in order to maintain contact from neutral territory with the branches in the warring countries. After the war, he was a member of the Zionist delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. He remained a leading member of the Zionist Executive, serving as vice-president and later as president of congresses and chairman of the Actions Committee. Motzkin was active in the efforts to promote the Hebrew language and culture and was one of the few early Zionists who was able to address the cultural committees in Hebrew.

   Motzkin was also one of the foremost champions of Jewish minority rights in Europe. From 1905 onwards, he carried out intensive research on the history of Jewish pogroms in Russia, and in 1910 published a two-volume work on the subject. In 1915 he went on a mission to the United States to organize help for the Jews in the war-torn areas of Russia. At the Paris Peace Conference, he played an active role in shaping the minority guarantees in the treaties with new states. He was one of the moving spirits in the Congress of National Minorities, but in 1933 resigned from it in protest when it was unwilling to take up the plight of the Jews in Germany. He died soon afterwards and his remains were re- interred the following year on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Motzkin’s thwarted mathematical career was fulfilled through his son Theodore (1908–70), who taught at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and later became professor of mathematics at the University of California.