Yehiel Tschlenow

Early life and education

Yehiel Tschlenow was born into a Hasidic family in the city of Kremenchuk in the Poltava Governorate, then in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire. In 1876, as a boy, he moved with his family to Moscow, where he completed his high school education.^[1] After graduating from high school, he began studying medicine at Moscow University, graduating in 1888. During his studies, he became close to revolutionary movements in Russia and began to take an interest in the ideology of the Narodniks. After graduation, he began a medical career in Moscow.

Initial Zionist activity

Following the pogroms of 1881, he left the Russian revolutionary circles and grew closer to the Hovevei Zion. Together with Menachem Ussishkin, he founded the first Zionist group in Moscow, and later in 1884, together with Rabbi Yaakov Mazeh and Pesach Marek, he founded the "Bnei Zion" (Sons of Zion) group. In 1897, he participated in the First Zionist Congress in Basel, and joined the Zionist movement.

Leader of Russian Zionists

In 1902 he was the chairman of the Minsk Conference. At the Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903 he led the faction of Russian Zionists who opposed the Uganda Scheme, and along with 128 congress members, walked out of the plenum in protest against the acceptance of the plan. Against the plan, Tschlenow wrote several articles under the general title: "Zion and Africa".^[2] Yehiel served as chairman of the 3rd Congress of Russian Zionists in Helsinki from 1905 to 1907. The main plan discussed there was the mobilization of resources for purchasing land in Palestine.

He married Rebecca, daughter of Shalom Ratner. Her home was a meeting place and workspace for the center of Russian Zionism.^[3] After hesitations and delays, he yielded to the entreaties of Zionist leaders and moved, after the Eleventh Zionist Congress held in Vienna, to Berlin, where he had to travel without his family, who remained in Moscow. He stayed in Berlin until the outbreak of World War I, when he returned to his home in Moscow.^[4]

In senior Zionist roles

At the General Zionist Congresses, Tschlenow was elected as a member of the Jewish Colonial Trust and as a member of the Jewish National Fund. By virtue of his new role, he visited Palestine between 1907 and 1909 and purchased land near the Sea of Galilee, where the agricultural settlement of Migdal was established. In the following years, he invested his efforts in writing about issues of education and the future development of Zionism, and also continued writing articles against the Uganda Scheme.^[2] In 1911, he moved to Berlin, which became the permanent center of the Zionist movement until 1921, and headed the "Geulat Ha'aretz" (Land Redemption) company established by Otto Warburg. In 1911 he was elected to the Zionist Executive of the World Zionist Congress, which was the body with the greatest authority in the Congress. That same year, the "She'erit Yisrael" society from Moscow, of which he was one of the heads, purchased land and established the Ruhama. As part of his role, he participated in the inauguration of the Technion in Haifa in 1912.

During World War I, after returning to Moscow, he traveled to a Zionist Executive gathering in Copenhagen, and from there to London, where he participated in the political activities of Dr. Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow.

Policy line in his last years

Tschlenow advocated for the Zionist movement to remain neutral in the war and not intervene in favor of either side. He strongly opposed the establishment of the Committee for Eastern Affairs by German Zionists, as he believed this could lead to antisemitism in Russia. He opposed Ze'ev Jabotinsky's initiative to establish the Jewish Legion with British support, as well as the initiative of Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow to mobilize Jewish support for the British Empire. Tschlenow received the Balfour Declaration in 1917 coolly and opposed celebratory parades following it.

Russian Zionist Congress in 1917

After the February Revolution, all political parties in Russia became legal, and between May 24 and 31, the General Congress of all Russian Zionists took place, where parties with all possible platforms were represented. The parties reached an agreement on policy lines in the new situation.

During one of his missions for the Zionist movement in London in 1918, Yehiel Tschlenow died of pneumonia following complications of the Spanish flu, at the age of 54. He left behind his wife Rebecca, who immigrated to Palestine in 1922 with her two sons (Ze'ev and Binyamin) and her daughter Dr. Fanny Tschlenow-Krieger, who married Dr. Moshe Krieger.^[5] Rebecca died in Tel Aviv on April 21, 1957.^[3]