Israel Eldad (; born Israel Scheib; 11 November 1910 – 22 January 1996), was an Israeli Revisionist Zionist philosopher and member of the Jewish underground group Lehi in

Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine was a British Empire, British geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations's Mandate for Palestine. After ...

Biography

Israel Scheib was born in 1910 in Pidvolochysk, Galicia in a traditional Jewish home. The Scheibs wandered as refugees during the First World War. In 1918, in Lvov, young Scheib witnessed a funeral procession for Jews murdered in a pogrom. After high school, Scheib enrolled at the Rabbinical Seminary of Vienna for religious studies and the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (, ) is a public university, public research university in Vienna, Austria. Founded by Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, Duke Rudolph IV in 1365, it is the oldest university in the German-speaking world and among the largest ...

for secular studies. He completed his doctorate on "The Voluntarism of Eduard von Hartmann, Based on Schopenhauer," but never took his rabbinical exams at the seminary. Meanwhile, he attended, with his father, a protest demonstration in front of the local British Consulate following the 1929 Palestine riots in Palestine. The next year he read a poem by Uri Zvi Greenberg, "I'll Tell It to a Child," about a messiah who cannot redeem his people because they are not ready to accept redemption. Two or three years later, Scheib met Greenberg at a speech Greenberg was giving entitled "The Land of Israel Is in Flames."

Pedagogic and academic career, 1937–1939

Scheib's first job after graduation was high school teaching in Volkovisk. Scheib joined the staff of the Teachers Seminary in Vilna in 1937 while this city was part of

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

, where he stayed for two years.

Zionist activism

In Poland

During that time he rose in the

Betar The Betar Movement (), also spelled Beitar (), is a Revisionist Zionism, Revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky. It was one of several right-wing youth movements tha ...

ranks to the position of regional staff officer. In 1938, at the Third Betar Conference in Warsaw, when the Revisionist leader

Ze'ev Jabotinsky Ze'ev Jabotinsky (born Vladimir Yevgenyevich Zhabotinsky; 17 October 1880 – 3 August 1940) was a Russian-born author, poet, orator, soldier, and founder of the Revisionist Zionist movement and the Jewish Self-Defense Organization in O ...

attacked the militant stance of Poland's Betar leader

Menachem Begin Menachem Begin ( ''Menaḥem Begin'', ; (Polish documents, 1931–1937); ; 16 August 1913 – 9 March 1992) was an Israeli politician, founder of both Herut and Likud and the prime minister of Israel. Before the creation of the state of Isra ...

, Scheib spoke in Begin's defense. The next year, when the Second World War broke out, Scheib and Begin escaped together from Warsaw. Begin was arrested by the Soviet police in the middle of a chess game with Scheib, and it was several years before their next encounter. Eldad immigrated to

in 1941.

Leader of Lehi in Mandatory Palestine

Eldad and Begin met again in British-ruled Mandatory Palestine, where Scheib was already a leader of the Lehi underground and Begin would soon command the Irgun. The Lehi was at that point waging a violent struggle for freedom from British rule and the Irgun would, under Begin, soon join the revolt in hopes of turning Palestine into a Jewish state. Scheib adopted several aliases while living underground, including "Sambatyon" and "Eldad". He worked in 1942 directly with Lehi founder Avraham Stern. After Stern's killing by the British, Eldad became one of a triumvirate of Lehi commanders, working together with Natan Yellin-Mor and future prime minister Yitzhak Shamir.Moshe and Tova Svorai, ''Me'Etzel Le'Lechi'', 1989, pp. 419-422 (Hebrew) and Israel Eldad, ''Maaser Rishon'', pp. 133-145 (Hebrew) Yellin-Mor was the diplomatic "foreign minister," Shamir the operations man, and Eldad the ideologue. For the next six years Eldad wrote articles for various underground newspapers, some of which he edited. Eldad also wrote some of the speeches delivered in court by Lehi defendants. Eldad was arrested by the British when trying to flee from a Tel Aviv apartment; he was injured in a fall from a water pipe, and imprisoned in Jerusalem in a body cast. He continued his political and philosophical writing from Cell 18 of the hospital ward at the Jerusalem Central Prison. Eventually, in June 1946, Eldad healed enough to escape while on a visit in a dentist's clinic, from which several Lehi fighters spirited him away.

During the 1948 War

During the 1948 Palestine war, Eldad continued to be active as a co-leader of Lehi. Acting in this role, Eldad participated in September 1948 in ordering the assassination of

Folke Bernadotte Folke Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg (2 January 1895 – 17 September 1948) was a Swedish nobleman and diplomat. In World War II, he negotiated the release of about 450 Danish Jews and 30,550 non-Jewish prisoners of many nations from the Nazi ...

, a United Nations mediator, as he subsequently admitted. During the war Eldad was critical of Menachem Begin's Irgun for them, as he thought, not fighting against the Israel Defence Forces during the ''Altalena'' Affair. He was also critical of the IDF for not fighting harder to conquer Jerusalem's Old City, and critical of Lehi fighters who did not rush to fight in Jerusalem. Towards the end of the war, Eldad disguised himself as a foreign journalist in order to sneak past Israeli military roadblocks and join the battle for Jerusalem.

Political career

The Lehi veterans organized politically as the Fighters' List. The party won one seat in the election for the First Knesset and dissolved afterwards. At one party meeting, Eldad lectured on ''Sulam'',

Jacob's ladder Jacob's Ladder () is a ladder or staircase leading to Heaven that was featured in a dream the Biblical Patriarch Jacob had during his flight from his brother Esau in the Book of Genesis (chapter 28). The significance of the dream has been de ...

(based on , where

Jacob Jacob, later known as Israel, is a Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions. He first appears in the Torah, where he is described in the Book of Genesis as a son of Isaac and Rebecca. Accordingly, alongside his older fraternal twin brother E ...

dreams of a ladder uniting heaven and earth). Eldad taught Bible and Hebrew literature in an Israeli high school until Prime Minister

David Ben-Gurion David Ben-Gurion ( ; ; born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary List of national founders, national founder and first Prime Minister of Israel, prime minister of the State of Israel. As head of the Jewish Agency ...

intervened and had him dismissed. Ben-Gurion was afraid Eldad would imbue the students with his Lehi ideology. Eldad went to court and won, but found few people willing to hire him after Ben-Gurion had labeled him a danger to the state. In 1962, Eldad was made a lecturer at the Technion in

Haifa Haifa ( ; , ; ) is the List of cities in Israel, third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropolitan area i ...

. He taught there for twenty years. Starting from 1982 Eldad was a lecturer at the

Ariel University Center of Samaria Ariel University (), previously a public college known as the Ariel University Center of Samaria, is an Israeli university located in the urban Israeli settlement of Ariel (city), Ariel in the West Bank. The college preceding the establishment o ...

Literary career

For 14 years he published a revolutionary journal, ''Sulam''. Eldad spent half of 1949 writing his memoirs, entitled ''Maaser Rishon''. He wrote histories of underground battles, a biography of the mayor of Ramat Gan, a newspaper-style review of Jewish history called ''Chronicles'', a book of Bible commentary, ''Hegionot Mikra'', weekly newspaper columns, and many more books, encyclopedia entries and other works. In 1988, Eldad was awarded

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

's Bialik Prize for his contributions to Israeli thought. By the 1990s, Eldad was known as the doyen of Israeli nationalists. Much of his work has been translated into English, mostly by Zev Golan. Among his works: ''Chronicles'' . ''The Jewish Revolution'' appeared in 1971, and was reissued in 2007. ''Free Jerusalem'' includes a chapter by Eldad ("Meanwhile, A European Interlude") about Polish Jewry on the eve of war. ''Israel: The Road to Full Redemption'', a translation of an article in ''Sulam'', was published in 1961 and is today a virtually unobtainable brochure. His memoirs of the time he led the Lehi underground organisation, ''The First Tithe'', were translated and first published in 2008. ''God, Man and Nietzsche'' includes a lengthy examination of Eldad's philosophy of history and excerpts from an article about

Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche became the youngest pro ...

written by Eldad in the underground. When he died on the first day of the Hebrew month of Shevat, in January 1996, his funeral was attended by future Prime Minister

Benjamin Netanyahu Benjamin Netanyahu (born 21 October 1949) is an Israeli politician who has served as the prime minister of Israel since 2022, having previously held the office from 1996 to 1999 and from 2009 to 2021. Netanyahu is the longest-serving prime min ...

, former Lehi commander and prime minister Yitzhak Shamir and

Knesset The Knesset ( , ) is the Unicameralism, unicameral legislature of Israel. The Knesset passes all laws, elects the President of Israel, president and Prime Minister of Israel, prime minister, approves the Cabinet of Israel, cabinet, and supe ...

Speaker Dov Shilansky. Eldad was buried on the Mount of Olives, at the foot of the grave of his mentor and friend, Uri Zvi Greenberg.

Views and opinions

The book ''Stern: The Man and His Gang'' by Zev Golan has a biography of Eldad and a detailed comparison of his political ideas and goals with those of other Lehi leaders.

Jewish state

Eldad did not believe that the creation of the state of Israel was the goal of Zionism. He considered the state a tool to be used in realizing the true goal of Zionism, which he called ''Malkhut Yisrael'', "the Kingdom of Israel". Eldad sought what he referred to as national redemption, meaning a sovereign Jewish kingdom in the biblical borders of Israel, with all the world's Jews living there, and the Jewish

Temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. By convention, the specially built places of worship of some religions are commonly called "temples" in Engli ...

rebuilt in Jerusalem.

Jewish diaspora

Eldad steadfastly refused to give legitimacy to any Jewish presence in the

Diaspora A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of birth, place of origin. The word is used in reference to people who identify with a specific geographic location, but currently resi ...

, which he felt was doomed to extinction. Nonetheless, in his view of history, past generations of Jews in exile from the

Land of Israel The Land of Israel () is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine. The definition ...

were not denigrated as passive sufferers, but were considered creative players in history.Zev Golan, ''God, Man and Nietzsche'', p. 113

Awards and recognition

* In 1977, Eldad was awarded the Tchernichovsky Prize for exemplary translation. * In 1988, he was the co-recipient (jointly with Zvi Meir Rabinovitz) of the Bialik Prize for Jewish thought. * In 1990, he received the Yakir Yerushalayim (Worthy Citizen of Jerusalem) award from the city of

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

. City of Jerusalem official website Many of Eldad's political and philosophical teachings continue to be espoused by the Magshimey Herut (achievers of liberty) organization, the Zionist Freedom Alliance, and by the Hatikva political party, the latter one led by Eldad's son Aryeh. The

Israeli settlement Israeli settlements, also called Israeli colonies, are the civilian communities built by Israel throughout the Israeli-occupied territories. They are populated by Israeli citizens, almost exclusively of Israeli Jews, Jewish identity or ethni ...

Kfar Eldad was named after him.

Published works

* ''The Jewish Revolution: Jewish Statehood'' (Israel: Gefen Publishing House, 2007), * ''Maaser Rishon''. Originally published in 1950 in Hebrew. English translation: ''The First Tithe'' (Tel Aviv: Jabotinsky Institute, 2008), * ''Israel: The Road to Full Redemption'' (New York: Futuro Press, 1961)