MOHILEVER Origin of surname

Samuel Mohliver (1824-1898), rabbi, leader of Zionist movement Hibbat Zion, born in Glubokoye, a town near Vilna, Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire). Mohliver studied at the yeshiva of Bialystok where he was ordained as a rabbi at the early age of eighteen. For some five years he refused to practice as a rabbi but finally accepted the position of rabbi of his native town in 1848. In the years which followed he was called to fill the role of communal rabbi in increasingly more important communities: first at Sakiai, Lithuania (then in Russia), Suwalki, Poland (then in Russia), and Radom, Poland (then in Russia). Finally from 1883 until his death in 1898 he was rabbi of Bialystok, Poland.

The pogroms initiated by the Russians against the Jews in 1881 moved him to work for the emigration of Jews to Eretz Israel. To escape the persecution many Jews had fled across the Russian border as far as Lvov in Galicia which was then part of the Austrian empire (now Lviv, in Ukraine). Mohliver tried to divert them to Eretz Israel, without success. However he did not let the matter rest and was partly responsible for the founding of the Hibbat Zion Zionist movement (also known as Hovevei Zion) and became one of its leaders. The movement was dominated by secular Jews and he was one of the very few traditional rabbis associated with it. His decision to remain within the Zionist movement and cooperate with agnostic or less observant Jews was a turning point in the history of religious Zionism which ultimately led to the creation of the Mizrachi movement. Throughout his life Mohliver pressurized the religious establishment to attach itself to Zionism while pressurizing the secular Zionists to accommodate the religious groups.

In his articles published in the newspaper “Ha-Levanon” he stressed the need for cooperation with the “maskilim” [followers of the Haskala or Jewish enlightenment, movement, who pressed for more integration of Jews into European society and more education in secular studies] and insisted that rabbis "combine the Torah and wisdom as the time is appropriate." Mohliver devoted most of his time and effort to the Zionist movement and worked tirelessly to increase the Jewish population in Eretz Israel. In 1882, he traveled to Paris and succeeded in persuading Baron Edmond de Rothschild to take an interest in the efforts to support existing settlements in Eretz Israel and to establish new ones. As a result of his efforts Ekron and Rishon Le Zion were founded, and the settlement of Petach Tikvah, at the time in a difficult position, was consolidated. In 1890, Mohliver helped to found the settlement of Rehovot. In 1888, a shemittah year when according to the Torah the fields in the Land of Israel should lie fallow, he joined Rabbi I. E. Spektor and Rabbi M. Eliasberg and others to find innovative interpretations of the Law which enabled the farmers to continue to work their fields.

In 1890, he headed a Hovevei Zion group on a tour of Eretz Israel, and upon his return to Bialystok published an open letter entitled "The Purpose of my Trip to the Holy Land," in which he called upon members of Hovevei Zion "to work physically and financially for the sake of Eretz Israel." A citrus orchard near Haderah, later to become a kibbutz, was named Gan Shmuel in honor of Mohliver on the occasion of his 70th birthday. He was recognized as the leader of Russian Zionists. A letter from him, read to delegates at the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 created a great impression and he was chosen to be one of the four leaders charged with directing the work of the Zionist Movement in Russia. He later became a close friend of Herzl. Mohliver wrote many talmudic respnsa and rabbinical treatises most of which were lost in the Bialystok pogrom in 1906. Some of the ones that survived were published in 1944 under the name "Ikrei Halakhah v-She'elot u-Teshuvot".

Rabbi Samuel Mohliver died in Bialystok in 1898.