BILU

BILU, an acronym for the Hebrew verse House of Jacob! Come, let us go (Isaiah 2:5) was a proto-Zionist group established in 1882 in the wake of pogroms in the Russian Empire. The BILU organizer Israel Belkind assembled fellow Jewish university students in Kharkov to consider the implications of manifest antisemitism for Jewish life, and how to proceed. The group debated prospects for securing Jewish life in perpetuity and decided on settlement in the Land of Israel. The first cohort of fourteen pioneers arrived in Jaffa in mid-1882 and began farming at the Mikveh Israel agricultural school. Between a lack of training and the harsh realities of agriculture, many soon left. In 1884, using money from Ḥoveve Tsiyon, Yeḥiel Pines purchased land for the BILU settlement of what became the moshavah Gedera. BILU was a forebear and harbinger of political Zionism and an example for subsequent agricultural cooperative movements of the Second Aliyah period to better prepare settlers for the hardships of life and agricultural work in Palestine.