Meir Dizengoff (Hebrew: מאיר דיזנגוף, Russian:
Меер Янкелевич Дизенгоф), 1861-1936, was a
Zionist politician and the first mayor of Tel
Aviv.
Early years
Meir Dizengoff was born in 1861 in the small
village of Yakimovichi (which has since been
incorporated into the city of Orgeyev,
Bessarabia). In 1878, his family moved to
Kishinev, where he graduated from high school
and studied at the polytechnic school. In 1882,
he volunteered in the Imperial Russian Army,
serving in Zhitomir (now in the northeastern
Ukraine) until 1884. There he first met Zina
Brenner, whom he married in the early 1890s.
After his military service, Dizengoff remained
in Odessa, where he became involved in the
Narodnaya Volya underground. In 1885, he was
arrested for insurgency. In Odessa, he met Leon
Pinsker, Ahad Ha’am and others, and joined the
Hovevei Zion movement. Upon his release from
prison, Dizengoff returned to Kishinev and
founded the Bessarabian branch of Hovevei Zion,
which he represented at the 1887 conference. He
left Kishinev in 1889 to study in Paris.
While studying chemical engineering at the
University of Paris, he met Edmond James de
Rothschild, who sent him to Ottoman-ruled
Palestine to establish a glass factory which
would supply bottles for Rothschild's wineries.
Dizengoff opened the factory in Tantura in 1882,
but it proved unsuccessful due to impurities in
the sand, and Dizengoff soon returned to
Kishinev. There he met Theodor Herzl and became
his ardent follower, despite having been
strongly opposed to the British Uganda Program
promoted by Herzl at the Sixth Zionist |
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