Nahum Sokolov

Nahum Sokolow (Nahum ben Joseph Samuel Sokolow, Hebrew: נחום ט' סוקולוב‎‎ Nachum ben Yosef Shmuel Soqolov, Yiddish: סאָקאָלאָוו‎, 10 January 1859 – 17 May 1936) was a Zionist leader, author, translator, and a pioneer of Hebrew journalism.

Nahum Sokolow was born in Wyszogród, near Plock, Poland (then Russian Empire). He began to attend heder at the age of three. When he was five, his parents moved to Plock. At the age of ten, he was already renowned as a Hebrew scholar. His father wanted him to study for the rabbinate but with the intervention of Baron Wrangel, the governor of Plock, he enrolled in a secular school. He married at eighteen and settled in Makov, where his father-in-law lived, and earned a living as a wool merchant. At the age of 20, he moved to Warsaw and became a regular contributor to the Hebrew daily HaTzefirah. Eventually he wrote his own column and went on to become editor and co-owner.In 1914, after the outbreak of World War I, he moved to London to work with Chaim Weizmann.

Sokolow died in London in 1936.

Sokolow was a prolific author and translator. His works include a three-volume history of Baruch Spinoza and his times, and various other biographies. He was the first to translate Theodor Herzl's utopian novel Altneuland into Hebrew, giving it the name Tel Aviv (literally, "An Ancient Hill of Spring"). In 1909, the name was adopted for the first modern Hebrew-speaking city: Tel Aviv.

In 1906 Sokolow was asked to become the secretary general of the World Zionist Congress. In the ensuing years, he crisscrossed Europe and North America to promote the Zionist cause. After moving to London, he was a leading advocate for the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which the British government declared its support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

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