Arthur Ruppin

Arthur Ruppin (1 March 1876 ––1 January 1943) was a Zionist thinker and leader. He was also one of the founders of the city of Tel Aviv, directing Berlin's Bureau for Jewish Statistics and Demography from 1902 to 1907. In 1926 Ruppin joined the faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and founded the sociology department. A building there is now named in his honor. His most celebrated sociological work is "The Jews In The Modern World" (1934).

Arthur Ruppin was born in Rawicz in the German Empire (today in Poland). When he was fifteen, his family's poverty forced him to work to support it. Nonetheless, he was able to complete his studies in law and economics, winning the Krupp prize in 1899 for his dissertation on the use of social Darwinism in industry. He was to distinguish himself both in furthering practical Zionist settlement and in the academic world.

Ruppin joined the Zionist Organization (ZO, the future World Zionist Organization - WZO) in 1905. In 1907 he was sent by David Wolfsohn, the President of the ZO, to study the condition of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine), then in the Ottoman Empire, to investigate the possibilities for development of agriculture and industry. He reported on what he saw, which was distressing, and gave recommendations for improving the situation. In 1908 Ruppin came to live in Palestine by decision of the eighth Zionist Congress. He opened the Palestine Office of the Zionist Organization in Jaffa, with the aim of directing the settlement activities of the Zionist movement. His work made Practical Zionism possible and shaped the direction of the Second Aliya, the last wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine before World War I.

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