Ben-Ami

1854–1932

Born near Mogilev (today Mahilyow, Belarus), Ḥayim Mordechai (Mark) Rabinovich (Ben-Ami) moved at age four to Bessarabia following his father’s death. When he was ten, he moved to Odessa with his mother and studied in a maskilic Talmud Torah before finishing his studies in a gymnasium. With the outset of pogroms in the spring of 1881, he became active in organizing Jewish self-defense groups. Following the pogroms, he moved to Paris and began contributing Russian articles to Voskhod under the pen name Reish-Galuta. Returning to Odessa in 1886, he became active in Ḥovevei Tsiyon and Zionist politics, taking the pen-name Ben-Ami (“A Son of My People,”) and strategizing with Ahad Ha-Am, Leon Pinsker, and Theodor Herzl, among others. Around the time of the 1905 Russian Revolution, he moved to Geneva, where he lived until immigrating to Palestine in 1924. Ben-Ami’s articles and memoirs about the Jewish question reflect the period of emergent and evolving Jewish nationalism in Russia.

Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator

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Proclamation

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Brothers!The slaughter and plunder in Kishinev, the likes of which have not descended upon us since the days of Chmielnicki and Gonta—command us to open our eyes and see our status in this country as…