(1821-1891). Zionist leader. Born in Tomaszow, Poland, Pinsker first studied law and when barred from practice as a Jew took a degree in medicine, practicing in Odessa. At first a firm believer in Assimilation into Russian society and culture, he was awakened by the pogroms of 1881 and a year later published his best-known work, Autoemancipation, where he analyzed the roots of Anti-Semitism and called for the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in the Land of Israel, or in America---a sure sign, as with Herzl, of his distance from the emotional core of Jewish life. "The lack of national self-respect and self-confidence, of political initiative and of unity," he wrote, "are the enemies of our national renaissance.... The proper and the only remedy would be the creation of a Jewish nationality, of a people living upon its own soil, the autoemancipation of the Jews."
Both the Orthodox and the assimilationists attacked him, but the pamphlet met with an enthusiastic response in Ḥibbat Zion circles and he soon became the leader of the movement, now committed to the Land of Israel as the site of the Jewish homeland. In 1884 he presided over the Kattowitz Conference (with Samuel Mohilewer as honorary president) and continued to work for Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel until his death.
Legalized in Russia in 1890 as the Odessa Committee (the Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Palestine and Syria), the Ḥibbat Zion movement opened offices in Jaffa and assisted in the purchase of land and the founding of agricultural settlements (moshavot), though ultimately the latter would require the philanthropic intervention of the Baron de Rothschild. Pinsker's remains were reinterred on Mount Scopus in 1934.
