הרב יחיאל מיכל פינס

Rav Yechiel Michel Pines (23 Tishrei 5604/1843–6 Adar II 5673/1913) was a writer, thinker and builder of the yishuv in Eretz Yisrael, counted among the fathers of religious Zionism. He was born in the town of Ruzhany in the Grodno district to a wealthy and observant family, and his rebbe was Rav Mordechai Gimpel Yaffe, rav of the town and an early leader of Chovevei Tzion. He married Chaya Tzipa, daughter of Shemaryahu Luria of Mogilev and of Chana, daughter of Hillel Rivlin, and settled there, earning his living in commerce while serving as a rosh yeshiva and writing widely in the Hebrew press. Before he was thirty he was already calling in print for settling the Land, and he gathered those articles into Yaldei Ruchi.

In 1877 the Mazkeret Moshe Montefiore committee asked him to serve as its representative in Eretz Yisrael, and in August 1878 he was summoned to London for final instructions: to live at peace with every section of Yerushalayim’s Jewry and to draw no distinction between Sephardim and Ashkenazim. He reached Yerushalayim on 22 Elul 5638, leaving his wife and four daughters behind for a time. His involvement in schools that taught foreign languages and crafts drew a cherem (ostracizing) against him; most of the rabbanim of Yerushalayim did not accept it, and Rav Shmuel Salant headed the beit din that annulled it, holding that the ban had never taken hold. In 5642/1882 he worked at the redemption of the lands of Petach Tikva.

Together with Eliezer Ben-Yehuda he founded the society Techiyat Yisrael for the revival of the Hebrew tongue and the redemption of land, and on the night of Hoshana Rabbah 5642 the two undertook to speak only Hebrew so far as they were able. He was among the founders of Vaad HaLashon HaIvrit and coined words still in daily use — machog, sha’on, agvaniya — and with Binyamin Shereshevsky fixed Hebrew names for six chemical elements, among them pachman and meiman, which he set into Sefer HaKoach, his book of natural science for children, printed in 5654. He gave his support to the Biluim, and in the Gedera dispute they acceded to his request and kept the shemittah of 5649/1889.

In 5653 he was appointed to the board of Beit HaSefarim Midrash Abarbanel — which grew into the National Library — later headed it, and remained among its directors almost until his last day, giving shiurim in the Kuzari in the library hall. In his final years he taught Talmud at the Hebrew teachers’ seminary in Yerushalayim. He was niftar in Yafo on 6 Adar II 5673 and was brought to rest on Har HaZeitim; his son-in-law was Yosef Meyuchas, and the moshav Kfar Pines and its ulpanah carry his name.