Shimon Yaakov Gliksberg

(born in 1870 in Miedzyrzec Podlaski – died in 1950 in Tel-Aviv) was a scholar, preacher, historian and one of the founding members of the Mizrachi Zionist movement.

Born to a Hassidic family, Rabbi Gliksberg studied in a yeshiva in Miedzyrzec Podlaski and later in the Tomchei Torah institution of Minsk, founded by The Great One of Minsk.

He was ordained as a rabbi by the esteemed Rabbi Yosef Hacohen Ravitz, the rabbi of Rastovich, by Rabbi Haim Yehuda of Smorgan and Rabbi Moshe Shaul Shapira of Bobruysk. For several years, he assisted his father-in-law, Rabbi Mordechai Dovid Alpert, the head of a rabbinical court in the district of Minsk who was known as "Yad Mordechai," the name of his most important book. In Minsk, Rabbi Gliksberg was one of the leaders of the Shlomei Emunei Zion group, which later became the Mizrachi movement. He was among the delegates to the movement's founding meeting in Vilna in the winter of 1902 representing his home town of Miedzyrzec Podlaski. He became a member of the Central Committee and was chosen together with Rabbi Ze'ev Yavetz to draft an organizational plan, to choose a name for the movement and to outline a platform for the new Zionist religious party. From that moment on, he continued to act as an advocate for the Mizrahi. When Rabbi Gliksberg came back to Miedzyrzec Podlaski to present his report on the conference, an audience of thousands assembled to hear him in the large Beis Midrash, where he had studied as a youth.

Rabbi Gliksberg accepted a position of a rabbi in Pinsk in 1902. He was a delegate to the Russian Zionist Conference in Minsk and to the Sixth Zionist Congress in Basel in 1903. After the death of Theodor Herzl he traveled to various large cities as a representative of Mizrahi to eulogize the visionary of the Jewish state.

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