David Yudilovitz (; 18631943) was a Zionist activist with the

Hovevei Zion The Lovers of Zion, also ''Hovevei Zion'' () or ''Hibbat Zion'' (, ), were a variety of proto-Zionist organizations founded in 1881 in response to the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire and were officially constituted as a group at a conf ...

and teacher in Rishon Le-Zion. He was a friend and colleague of

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda Eliezer Ben‑Yehuda (born Eliezer Yitzhak Perlman; 7 January 1858 – 16 December 1922) was a Russian–Jewish linguist, lexicographer, and journalist who immigrated to Jerusalem in 1881, when the Ottoman Empire ruled it. He is renowned as the ...

Biography

Yudilovitz settled in Palestine in 1882 with the Bilu'im during the

First Aliyah The First Aliyah (), also known as the agriculture Aliyah, was a major wave of Jewish immigration (''aliyah'') to History of Israel#Ottoman period , Ottoman Palestine (region) , Palestine between 1881 and 1903. Jews who migrated in this wave cam ...

. He compared the state of the

Yishuv The Yishuv (), HaYishuv Ha'ivri (), or HaYishuv HaYehudi Be'Eretz Yisra'el () was the community of Jews residing in Palestine prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The term came into use in the 1880s, when there were about 2 ...

following the First Aliyah to "the time of the building of the Tower of Babel". Within the Yishuv he joined a small circle of committed activists who pursued the goal of a national culture for Jews. Owing to their activism, this process was underway by the time World War I started. Yudilovitz was one of the Zionist activists who saw the value of a national culture at a time the Yishuv lacked a unified national character. The diversity and difference within the Jewish community of Palestine after the First Aliyah was a crisis that could not be resolved by a Jewish return to the land without the cultural foundation for a nationalist solution to the ethnic, cultural and linguistic heterogeneity that many were dissatisfied with in Jewish Palestine.

References

People from Rishon LeZion Zionist activists Hovevei Zion 1863 births 1943 deaths Immigrants of the First Aliyah Romanian Zionists {{Asia-activist-stub