Page 57 - HaMizrachi Pesach 5782 USA

If Rabbi Yitzchak Yaakov Reines was the founder and visionary of the Mizrachi
movement, Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan was the powerful engine that brought so many of
those dreams to fulfillment. The son of the great Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin (the
Netziv), he joined the Mizrachi movement as a young man and later Hebraicized his last
name. Representing Mizrachi at the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905, he voted against
the Uganda plan, convinced that Eretz Yisrael was the only possible homeland for the
Jewish people. It is from this point on that Bar-Ilan began to devote his entire life and

activities to the development of the Mizrachi party in the Diaspora and Eretz Yisrael.

Appointed secretary of the Mizrachi World Movement, he moved to the United States
in 1915 where he served as President of the U.S. Mizrachi. He coined the Mizrachi

slogan ל ֵא ָר ְשִׂי ת ַרוֹתּ י ִפּ ל ַע ל ֵא ָר ְשִׂי ם ַע ְל ל ֵא ָר ְשִׂי ץ ֶר ֶא, “The Land of Israel, for the people of
Israel, according to the Torah of Israel.” A passionate activist, he understood that the
spiritual composition of the Jewish State must be decided not through ideas and advice,
nor through promises or decisions made from afar, but rather through the participation
of the religious community in building the land itself.

Moving to Israel in 1926, he was a leading opponent of the Palestine partition plan
in 1937 and of the British White Paper of 1939 and advocated civil disobedience and
complete noncooperation of the Jewish population with the British authorities. Along
with Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin, he also played a leading role in the founding of the
Talmudic Encyclopedia.

Before his death, Rabbi Bar-Ilan saw the realization of his dream – the establishment
of a Jewish State in the Land of Israel. In the last year of his life, the first of the new
State, he fought hard to have Jerusalem declared the capital of Eretz Yisrael. His name
has been memorialized in various places in Israel, such as Bar-Ilan University in Ramat

Gan, and Moshav Beit Meir near Jerusalem.

The sixth Mizrachi convention in the United States was held in Cincinnati, Ohio,

from May 23–27, 1919. Over 250 delegates, including sixty rabbis, were in attendance,
and Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan gave the keynote speech. The following is a translation of
his powerful words, first printed in Hebrew in the Warsaw edition of HaMizrachi
in the summer of 1919 and now translated to English in honor of his 73rd yahrzeit,
on the 18th of Nissan.

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