Leon Pinsker

Leon (Lev) Pinsker was born in Tomaszów, Russian Empire (today Tomaszów Lubelski, Poland), and raised in Odessa; his father, Simḥah Pinsker, was a noted scholar specializing in Karaite documents. Leon Pinsker studied law at Odessa University (he was one of the first Jews admitted there) but, unable to practice, went on to study medicine at the University of Moscow. In 1849, he set up a medical practice in Odessa. After serving in the Russian military during the Crimean War (1853–1855), Pinsker joined the Society for the Promotion of Culture among the Jews (OPE), promoting the cultural integration of Jews in the Russian Empire. In 1871 and again in 1881, he witnessed vicious pogroms in Odessa and state-sanctioned discrimination against Jews that made him revise his views on the possibility of Jewish assimilation into Russian society and European society more broadly. Pinsker published his pamphlet Autoemancipation in 1882 in Vienna. Well received in Eastern Europe, especially within the nascent Ḥibat Tsiyon movement, Pinsker’s call in the essay for the establishment of a Jewish homeland influenced the development of political Zionism. Late in his life, Pinsker became a leader of Ḥibat Tsiyon, heading up the movement’s Odessa office, which gained official recognition from the Russian government as the Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Palestine.