Creator Bio

Mordechai ben Hillel ha-Kohen

1856–1936

Born Mordechai Kagan (Kohen) in Mogilev in the Russian Empire (today Mahilyow, Belarus), Mordechai ben Hillel ha-Kohen received an education that combined traditional and maskilic dimensions. In 1874, he began contributing to Hebrew newspapers, becoming an editor of Ha-Shaḥar in 1876 and a frequent contributor to many Hebrew periodicals in Eastern Europe. He joined the Ḥibat Tsiyon movement in 1881, immigrating in 1907 to Palestine, where he fully adopted his Hebrew name, Mordechai ben Hillel ha-Kohen. He was a prolific Hebrew essayist, a successful timber merchant, and a founder of Mishpat ha-Shalom ha-‘Ivri, an institution for the legal arbitration of disputes among Jews in Palestine’s New Yishuv. He was also an author of a rich multivolume memoir on life in the New Yishuv.

Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator

Primary Source

In the Land of Israel

Public Access

Text

I traveled from Odessa by boat for eleven days until we arrived in Jaffa—this was the path taken by the Russian company’s ships. However, this was not the true length of the journey, which was in fact…