Place
Odessa אודסה
A young southern city without the old communal order: both Hibbat Zion and the new Hebrew literature were born here.
Odessa was not yet a hundred years old when a Jewish community of many thousands formed in it — without centuries-old statutes and without the usual supervision, freer and more restless than others. 'Living like in Odessa' became among neighbours both praise and reproach.
After the pogroms of 1881 Hibbat Zion arose here, and the First Aliyah set out from here. Ahad Ha'am, Bialik and Mendele worked in Odessa; from here people also left for America and the Land of Israel. The pogrom of 1905 and the events of the twentieth century all but ended the community.
On the timeline
5641 · 1881 CEThe Pogroms of 1881, the First Aliyah and Hibbat Zion5655 · 1895 CEThe Dreyfus Affair, Herzl and the First Zionist Congress5669 · 1909 CEThe Second Aliyah and the Founding of Tel Aviv
Sources
Documents of the period
- Statute of the Hibbat Zion society, Odessa, 1890 — the legalised statute of the Odessa committee — the start of organised aliyah
Basis: documents and evidence.