Yitzhak Ben-Zvi — president with roots in the Russian Empire
Yitzhak Ben-Zvi was born Yitzhak Shimshelevich on 24 November 1884 in Poltava, in the Russian Empire, now in Ukraine, the son of Zvi Shimshelevich and Atara, née Kopelevich. He received a Jewish education in a heder, then graduated from a Russian gymnasium. In 1904 he visited the Land of Israel for two months. During the upheavals of 1905 he helped to organise Jewish self-defence units in Poltava and was among the founders of the Labour Zionist party Po'alei Zion in Russia; in 1906 the authorities raided his home and found weapons belonging to the group.
At the beginning of 1907 he settled in Ottoman Palestine, first in Jaffa, and that year represented Po'alei Zion at the Eighth Zionist Congress in The Hague. He took part in founding the Bar Giora defence group and its successor Hashomer, the Hebrew gymnasium in Jerusalem's Rehavia, and, in 1910, the Hebrew socialist periodical Ahdut, with Rachel Yanait, whom he married in 1918, and David Ben-Gurion. In 1912 he and Ben-Gurion went to study law in Constantinople.
In 1915 the Ottoman authorities expelled them for their Zionist activities. In New York they founded the HeHalutz pioneer movement in America, and in 1918 they returned to Palestine as soldiers of the Jewish Legion in the British army. Under the British Mandate, Ben-Zvi was elected in 1920 to the leadership of the Va'ad Leumi, the National Council of the Jewish community, becoming its chairman in 1931 and its president in 1944 or 1945. He also pursued research into the history of Jewish communities in the Middle East, and in 1947 or 1948 founded the institute for their study that now bears his name.
He signed Israel's Declaration of Independence in May 1948, and was elected to the first and second Knesset for Mapai. After the death of Chaim Weizmann, the Knesset elected him the second President of Israel in December 1952; he was re-elected in 1957 and 1962, making him the longest-serving president. He died in office on 23 April 1963, at the beginning of his third term, aged seventy-eight. His portrait appeared for many years on Israel's 100-shekel banknote.
"Settled in Ottoman Palestine in 1907; expelled by the Ottoman authorities in 1915, he spent the war years in New York and returned in 1918 with the Jewish Legion."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Poltava, Poltava Governorate (now Ukraine)
Born Yitzhak Shimshelevich in Poltava in 1884, the son of Zvi Shimshelevich and Atara Kopelevich, he graduated from a Russian gymnasium, helped organise Jewish self-defence in Poltava in 1905 and was a founder of Po'alei Zion in Russia before leaving for Palestine in 1907.
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Poltava, Poltava Governorate (now Ukraine). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.