YEKHIEL-MIKHL HEYLPERIN (MICHAEL HALPERIN)

YEKHIEL-MIKHL HEYLPERIN (MICHAEL HALPERIN) (1860-November 23, 1920/1919)

            He was born in Vilna, to rich parents.  He gave away a great deal from his inherited estate to community needs.  After the pogroms of 1880 in Russia, he devoted himself entirely to the idea of Ḥibat-tsiyon (Love of Zion, early Zionism), and in 1885 he left for the land of Israel where with his own money he redeemed the land of Yesud Hamaala and founded the colony Nes Tsiyona (Ness Ziona).  He also founded (1887) the first workers’ union in Israel: Agudat Hapoalim (Association of laborers).  When there was issued in 1891 in Israel a ban on Jews entering the country, he and other young people conducted demonstrations against the decree, and he was deported from the country.  In subsequent years he was engaged with agitation on behalf of the Zionist idea, served as a delegate to Zionist congresses, cofounded Labor Zionism—first in Russia, later in Israel where he also helped to found “Hashomer” (The guard).  In 1906 he returned to Israel, and there he would remain until the end of his life.  He was already impoverished by this point, and he became a night watchman in Jaffa, later at the Herzliya High School in Tel Aviv.  He was sickly man, deserted by everyone, and in his last years he suffered from want.  He died in a hospital in Tsfat.  In his name was established near Nes Tsiyona the settlement of “Givat Miḥael” (Michael Hill), and in Tel Aviv there is a street named after him.

            Heylperin wrote in both Yiddish and Hebrew.  In 1890 a Yiddish-language pamphlet by him was published: Dos yudentum al pi hatalmud (Judaism according to the Talmud), “occasional reading for the present by Yekhiel Mikhl Heyperin, son of Elyahu, grandson of the brilliant Rabbi M. L. Malbim, may the memory of [this] righteous person be blessed, Odessa, published by R. Aba Dukhna”—48 pp. in large format.  The pamphlet was written in a popular Yiddish style and was divided into fifteen chapters (“Religion as a natural entity,” “Religion in practical life,” “Talmudic views of sanitation,” “The criminal court according to the Talmud,” and the like), with an epilogue in which the author speaks of his love for Zion and the moment “when Judaism will once again be able to give rise to such people that circumstances will raise the national banner of our liberation from slavery.”

Sources: A. Rukaḥ, in Ketavim letoldot ḥibat tsion veyishuv erets-yisrael (Writings on the history of love of Zion and the settlement in the land of Israel), ed. Alter Druyanov (Odessa-Tel Aviv, 1919-1936), pp. 133, 186; Yehuda Epel, Betokh reshit hateḥiya (At the beginning of the rebirth) (Tel Aviv, 1935), p. 455; Jacob Poleskin, Ḥolmim veloḥamim (Dreamers and fighters) (Petaḥ Tekva, 1922), see index; David Tidhar, in Entsiklopedyah leḥalutse hayishuv uvonav (Encyclopedia of the pioneers and builders of the yishuv), vol. 1 (Tel Aviv, 1947), pp. 275-76; Mendel Zinger, Bereshit hatsiyonut hasotsialistit (In the beginning of socialist Zionism) (Haifa, 1958), p. 198.