President Zelinsky is the latest in a long line of accomplished Ukrainian Jews, dating back to Rabbi Israel Ben Eliezer, better known as the Baal Shem Tov, which means "master of the good name." The Baal Shem Tov, born in 1698 in Okopy, is considered the father of the Hasidic Judaism and revolutionized Jewish thought. During the late 17th century, in the wake of the Khmelnitsky pogroms that left tens of thousands of Jews dead, people struggled to rebuild their lives and communities. The Baal Shem Tov was a member of the fellowship of "hidden tzaddikim," a group of devoted men who, disguised as simple people, dedicated their lives to improving the plight of their fellow Jews, spiritually and materially. After many years and much pressure, the Baal Shem Tov began preaching openly, and in 1740 when his following was sufficiently strong, he moved the center of Hassidism to the small town of Mezhibush, where he lived out the remainder of his life.
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Rav Nachman of Breslov (1772-1811), a great-grandson of the Baal ShemTov, born in Medzhybizh, started the Breslov movement of Hasidic Judaism. As a young man, the Rav Breslov traveled to Israel, where he gathered his first group of followers, and visited Hasidic communities in Haifa, Tiberias and Tzfat. Rav Nachman later settled in Breslov where he established “Breslover Hasidim,” and emphasized living life with joy and happiness, saying “it is a great mitzvah to be happy.” Today the largest community of Breslovic Hassidim is in the Meah Sharim neighborhood of Jerusalem, Israel.
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Ze’ev (Vladamir) Jabotinsky, born in Odessa in 1880, did not become connected to Judaism until adulthood when was working as a journalist. Following the Kishnev pogrom in 1903, which lasted 3 days and left hundreds of Jews killed and their property destroyed, Jabotinsky concluded that Jews needed their own country. He worked tirelessly to that end, and was even expelled from the British Mandate Palestine in 1929; Jabotinsky continued to fight for a Jewish state up until his death in 1940.
Source: Israel Government Press Office, Date: 09/01/1926, Copyright info: public domain
Golda Meir, Israel’s first and only woman to serve as Prime Minister, was born in Kyiv in 1898. As a child she moved to the United States with her family, in search of a better life. In high school, Meir joined the Zionist group, Poalei Zion (Workers of Zion), and in 1921 she immigrated to British Mandate Palestine with her husband, first settling in Kibbutz Merhavya and then moving to Jerusalem. She was an important part of the effort to establish a Jewish State, and after the war of Independence was appointed Israel’s Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Meir was elected to the Knesset in 1949, and served as minister of several departments including labor, national insurance and foreign affairs. She also served as secretary-general of two parties, and then in 1969, following the sudden death of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, the 71-year-old Meir assumed the post of Premier. The Yom Kippur war of 1973 ultimately led to Meir’s resignation in 1974.
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Simon Weisenthal, the famed “Nazi Hunter, was born in 1908 in Buczacz. He was an engineer in Lviv, prior to the outbreak of World War II. After miraculously surviving 5 concentration camps, Weisenthal worked closely with American prosecutors to locate Nazis, including the man who arrested Anne Frank and her family, the commanders of Treblinka and other concentration camps, and Adolf Eichman, who had supervised the implementation of the "Final Solution." When asked why he chose not to resume his career as an engineer after the war, Wiesenthal explained: "You're a religious man, you believe in G-d and life after death. I also believe. When we come to the other world and meet the millions of Jews who died in the camps and they ask us, 'What have you done?', there will be many answers. You will say, 'I became a jeweler', Another will say, ‘I smuggled coffee and American cigarettes', another will say, 'I built houses', But I will say, 'I didn't forget you'." In 1977, Wiesenthal founded the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a global Jewish human rights organization that confronts anti-Semitism and hate, and teaches the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations.
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