Israel Eldad
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Israel Eldad (1910 – 1996) born Israel Schieb in Podvolochisk, Galicia, was a philosopher and one of the leaders of the Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) or Lehi.
In his early years he studied at the Rabbinical Seminary in Vienna and later in the University of Vienna. After obtaining a doctorate in philosophy, he returned to Poland to teach Jewish studies at the Jewish Teacher’s Seminary in Vilna. Invited by Menachem Begin, Schieb joined the Warsaw leadership of Zev Jabotinsky's Betar and contributed philosophical, literary and political articles to the Hebrew and Yiddish press in Poland. He first met Avraham Stern in 1938. Stern would later found the militant group that would eventually come to be known as Lehi.
Arriving in Mandate Palestine in 1940, Schieb joined the Lehi High Command and took the underground name "Eldad". During the crucial years of World War II, when the British closed Palestine to refugees escaping Europe and enforced a repressive policy against the Jewish community, Eldad made secret broadcasts, wrote articles for underground publications and edited wall newspapers - illegal bulletins pasted on city walls by youth at night (the bulletins were later compiled in a book entitled "Let the Walls Speak"). Eldad was the movement’s foremost intellectual leader and his fiery articles were widely read and discussed even by Jews that opposed Lehi's terror campaign against the British.
In 1944, while attempting to escape arrest by the British police, Eldad suffered a serious back injury. Encased in a full body cast for two years, he was held at the prison of Jerusalem and at the Latrun detention camp. While on a visit to a Jerusalem hospital in 1946 to have his cast removed, Lehi fighters staged a dramatic rescue operation and freed him from captivity. Eldad resumed his underground activities until the British withdrew from the country and the State of Israel was declared.
After the establishment of the Jewish state, Eldad became a social critic of Israeli society and launched a monthly publication named "Sulam" (Ladder), in which he sharply criticized Israeli government policies and advocated the establishment of "Malkhut Yisrael" (the Kingdom of Israel) – through the "liberation" of the entire Land of Israel as defined in the Bible. His articles criticizing the Israeli government angered David Ben-Gurion so much that he ordered Israel's Ministry of Education to fire Eldad from his post as a high school teacher. Eldad fought his dismissal, took his case to Israel’s Supreme Court and won.
Eldad has written Ma'aser Rishon (The First Tithe), which chronicles the Hebrew underground movement and the role he played theirin. He is also the author of Hegyonot Mikrah (Reflections on Scripture), an original commentary on the Torah, and "The Jewish Revolution," a collection of English essays. Since his days in the underground, Eldad's writing style has generally combined patriotic passion with intellectual logic and the sweep of the historian.
While editing "Sulam" Eldad served as editor of "Chronicles: News of the Past" which describes events from Jewish history in the form of "contemporary newspaper reports." Mrs. Van Leer, a Dutch Jewish woman, conceived the idea of the publication. She asked the late Dr. Joseph Klausner to recommend to her an editor. Dr. Klausner suggested Eldad. The "Chronicles: News of the Past" has become a great instrument for the teaching of Jewish history. The "articles" and "news items" are based on sound historical research, though they naturally reflect Eldad’s thinking and understanding of Jewish history and historical factors. The volumes cover history from Abraham until Theodore Herzl's Zionist Congress. According to C. Zenziper, the American distributor, the publication was well received in the United States.
Professor Eldad lectured for many years in the Humanistic Studies at the Haifa Instititute of Technology (Technion) and at Ben-Gurion University in Be'er Sheva. He received of the prestigious Tchernichovsky Prize of the City of Ramat Gan, the Defender of Jerusalem Award of the Jabotinsky Foundation and Bialik Prize of the City of Tel Aviv. In 1990, the title of Distinguished Citizen of the Capital was conferred upon him by the City of Jerusalem, where he lived until his death in 1996.
The Magshimey Herut Zionist organization is said to be highly influenced by Israel Eldad's Zionist philosophy and has been active in teaching his views and disseminating his writings. Eldad's son Arie Eldad is currently a member of Israel's Knesset.
