Pinsker, Judah Loeb (Leon)

(1821-91)

   Russian Zionist. He was born in Tomaszow, Poland, and was one of the first Jews to enrol at Odessa University, where he studied law. Later he studied medicine at the University of Moscow, and returned to Odessa to set up practice in 1849. He was a founder of the first Russian Jewish weekly to which he contributed. Initially he was an advocate of the Haskalah movement, but after the wave of pogroms in 1881 he argued that only national territorial rebirth could solve the Jewish problem. In his pamphlet Auto-Emancipation he called for the creation of a Jewish territory, where the Jews could support and govern themselves. In 1884 he convened the Kattowitz Conference of Hovevei Zion where he was elected president of Hibbat Zion's presidium.