Naḥum Sokolow

Born in Wyszogród, Russian Empire (today in Poland), and reared in nearby Płock, Naḥum Sokolow belonged to a well-established rabbinic family. He received a traditional education, but on his own initiative, he enrolled in a school to study secular subjects, including several European languages. Sokolow began his career writing articles on scientific topics for presses in six languages: Polish, Russian, German, French, Yiddish, and Hebrew. Turning his attention to social and political affairs, he began contributing to the Hebrew journals Ha-Melits and Ha-Tsefirah on the topic of civil rights for Jews in the Russian Empire. In 1880, Sokolow moved to Warsaw to become the de facto editor of Ha-Tsefirah, helping to transform the outlet from a weekly scientific journal to a leading Hebrew newspaper, which became a daily in 1886. In 1897, after covering the First Zionist Congress in Ha-Tsefirah, Sokolow became an active proponent of political Zionism and journalistic ally to Theodore Herzl. Sokolow became secretary-general of the World Zionist Organization in 1906, founding its official Hebrew-language organ Ha-‘Olam and editing the German-language analog Die Welt during his tenure. Immigrating to the United Kingdom at the beginning of World War I, Sokolow participated in the negotiations surrounding the Balfour Declaration and in the Paris Peace Conference. He went on to succeed Chaim Weizmann as president of the World Zionist Organization in 1931. A prolific author and translator, he was the first to translate Herzl’s Altneuland into Hebrew, a translation he titled Tel Aviv (1902).