Israel Eldad
| Israel Eldad | |
|---|---|
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| Native name | ישראל אלדד |
| Born | Israel Scheib November 11, 1910 Pidvolochysk, Galicia |
| Died | January 22, 1996 Jerusalem, Israel |
| Pen name | Sambatyon, Eldad |
| Ethnicity | Jewish |
| Citizenship | Israel |
| Alma mater | University of Vienna |
Israel Eldad (Hebrew: ישראל אלדד) (11 November 1910 – 22 January 1996), was an Israeli Revisionist Zionist philosopher and member of the pre-state underground group Lehi.
Israel Scheib (later Eldad) was born in 1910 in Pidvolochysk, Galicia in a traditional Jewish home. The Scheibs wandered as refugees during the First World War. In 1918, in Lvov, young Scheib witnessed a funeral procession for Jews murdered in a pogrom.
After high school, Scheib enrolled at the Rabbinical Seminary of Vienna for religious studies and the University of Vienna for secular studies. He completed his doctorate on "The Voluntarism of Eduard von Hartmann, Based on Schopenhauer," but never took his rabbinical exams at the seminary.
Meanwhile, he attended, with his father, a protest demonstration in front of the local British Consulate following the 1929 Arab riots in Palestine. The next year he read a poem by Uri Zvi Greenberg, "I'll Tell It to a Child," about a messiah who cannot redeem his people because they are not ready to accept redemption. Two or three years later, Scheib met Greenberg at a speech Greenberg was giving entitled “The Land of Israel Is in Flames.”
Scheib's first job after graduation was high school teaching in Volkovisk. He also published articles in Revisionist Zionist journals and became the commander of a local Betar section.
Scheib joined the staff of the Teachers Seminary in Vilna in 1937 while this city was part of Poland, where he stayed for two years. During that time he rose in the Betar ranks to the position of regional staff officer. In 1938, at the Third Betar Conference in Warsaw, when the Revisionist leader Zeev Jabotinsky attacked the militant stance of Poland's Betar leader Menachem Begin, Scheib spoke in Begin's defense. The next year, when the Second World War broke out, Scheib and Begin escaped together from Warsaw. Begin was arrested by the Soviet police in the middle of a chess game with Scheib, and it was several years before they met again in British Mandatory Palestine, where Scheib was already a leader of the Lehi underground and Begin would soon command the Irgun. The Lehi was at that point waging a violent struggle for freedom from British rule and the Irgun would, under Begin, soon join the revolt in hopes of turning Palestine into a Jewish state.
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