Jeremiah Halpern
Encyclopedia
Captain Jeremiah Halpern (also known as Yirmiyahu Halpern and Yirmiyahu Halperin) (b. Smolensk
, Russia
, 1901; d. Tel Aviv
, Israel
, 1962) was a Revisionist
Zionist
leader in Palestine
who first came to prominence when he served as aide de camp to Ze'ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s when the latter was head of the Haganah
in Jerusalem.
Halpern, a certified ship's captain, was known as Rav Hahovel (captain of the ship) for his role in the development of Jewish seamanship.
, Lithuania
, who is now known mainly as the first proponent of a Jewish Legion
. Michael emigrated to Palestine from Smolensk in 1885 and was involved in setting up Jewish colonies on land bought from Arabs, in founding the first Hebrew workers' union and in helping to found the Workers of Zion movement and the Jewish self-defense force in 1905.
Jeremiah was brought to Palestine in 1913.
Halpern assisted in the defence of Jews of the Old City of Jerusalem during the 1920 Palestine riots
. Subsequently, he was a leader of Betar
, the Revisionist youth movement, and headed the Betar School of Instruction. On taking up permanent residence in Palestine in 1933 Halpern was associated primarily with the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation. He was also in charge of military training for the World Betar movement.
In later years he was associated with the Irgun
underground group in Palestine and Europe, undertook various Revisionist missions to the United States between 1939 and 1941 and was active in Hillel Kook
's Bergson Group.
In the early 1940s Halpern worked with Lord Stabolgi to achieve the objectives of Bergson's Committee for a Jewish Army, a campaign which was endorsed enthusiastically by the Jewish Chronicle, but which antagonised the Zionist establishment because of its association with Jabotinsky's New Zionist Organization.
(or Betar 'madricihim,' also often translated as 'youth guides' or 'youth leaders') in Tel Aviv in 1928, serving as its first director. Halpern recruited Abba Ahimeir
as an instructor of the nationalist youth and together the pair led the School in an increasingly radical direction in which military training was viewed as a means of establishing the military wing of a national liberation movement.
Under the leadership of Halpern (and later of Ahimeir) the 24 cadets took the lead in organising demonstrative activities outside Betar, which notably included taking the initiative in the march to the Western Wall in August 1929.
Halpern's cadets later formed the nucleus for the right-wing Maximalist
tendency in Revisionism and the activities of Halpern and Ahimeir contributed to the evolution of the Irgun and to the support of Revisionist Maximalism within Betar.
, three hundred Revisionist youths from the Battalion for the Defence of the Language
and Betar, who were led by Halpern, marched to the Western Wall proclaiming "The Wall is ours". The protesters raised the Zionist flag
and sang the Hatikvah
and were said to have insulted the Prophet
, Islam
, and the Muslim community at large and also to have beat up Muslim residents. The demonstration took place in the Muslim Maghribi district in front of the Mufti's house.
Two days later, in raised tensions caused by a 2000-strong Muslim counter-demonstration after Friday prayers the day before, a Jewish youth, Avraham Mizrahi, was killed and an Arab youth picked at random was stabbed in retaliation. Subsequently, the violence escalated into rioting throughout Palestine
.
The demonstration by Revisionist youth of 15 August was later identified as the proximal cause of the riots by the Shaw Commission.
a Revisionist association of Jewish reservists in the Polish Army
that grew into a world organisation with regional military and political training schools for members.
By 1939 Brit HaHayal had 25,000 members worldwide.
was established in Civitavecchia
, taly
in 1934. The titular head was the Italian maritime scientist Nicola Fusco but Jeremiah Halpern ran the School and was its driving force. The School trained cadets from all over Europe, Palestine and South Africa and produced some of the future commanders of the Israeli Navy.
Although the Revisionists were keen to ensure that trainees avoided local Fascist politics
the cadets did express public support for Benito Mussolini
's regime, as Halpern later detailed in his book History of Hebrew Seamanship. Cadets marched alongside Italian soldiers in support of the Second Italo–Abyssinian War and collected metal scraps for the Italian weapons industry. They "felt as if they were living the true Beitarist life in an atmosphere of herosim, militarism, and nationalistic pride."
The Academy closed in 1938.
Admiralty for the establishment of a Jewish Naval School to train members of a special Jewish unit for the British Army.
In 1942 Halpern opened a school for frogmen in France
, established a school for skipper cadets in London and was successful in attracting support from British officers and members of the Rothschild family
. Around 350 officers, mechanics and fishermen graduated from these schools.
and founded the Eilat Naval Museum, which was subsequently named after him.
In 1951 Halpern proposed to David Ben-Gurion
to re-organise the Israeli commercial and military Marine Corps and to establish a research programme to explore the natural resources of the Red Sea
.
In 1959 Halpern proposed an Eliat Canal as an alternative to the Suez Canal
.
Halpern wrote a number of books, including Tĕḥiyat ha-yamaʼut ha-ʻIvrit (1960) and Avi, Mikhaʼel Helpern (1964).
In addition to the scholarship the Halpern Foundation funded a research boat, the RV Halpern (launched September, 2005), for faculty members and students of the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies at the University of Haifa.
Smolensk
Smolensk is a city and the administrative center of Smolensk Oblast, Russia, located on the Dnieper River. Situated west-southwest of Moscow, this walled city was destroyed several times throughout its long history since it was on the invasion routes of both Napoleon and Hitler. Today, Smolensk...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, 1901; d. Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, 1962) was a Revisionist
Revisionist Zionism
Revisionist Zionism is a nationalist faction within the Zionist movement. It is the founding ideology of the non-religious right in Israel, and was the chief ideological competitor to the dominant socialist Labor Zionism...
Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
leader in Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
who first came to prominence when he served as aide de camp to Ze'ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s when the latter was head of the Haganah
Haganah
Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.- Origins :...
in Jerusalem.
Halpern, a certified ship's captain, was known as Rav Hahovel (captain of the ship) for his role in the development of Jewish seamanship.
Family
Jeremiah Halpern was the son of Michael Halpern (Y'hiel Mikhael Halpern; Yekhiel Michal Halperin) descendant of a wealthy rabbinical family from VilniusVilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
, Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, who is now known mainly as the first proponent of a Jewish Legion
Jewish Legion
The Jewish Legion was the name for five battalions of Jewish volunteers established as the British Army's 38th through 42nd Battalions of the Royal Fusiliers...
. Michael emigrated to Palestine from Smolensk in 1885 and was involved in setting up Jewish colonies on land bought from Arabs, in founding the first Hebrew workers' union and in helping to found the Workers of Zion movement and the Jewish self-defense force in 1905.
Jeremiah was brought to Palestine in 1913.
Education and career
Jeremiah Halpern was educated at The Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium in Tel Aviv and following his high school education graduated as a Captain from the Italian Naval Academy in 1917. In 1919 he graduated from the London School for Captains and Engineers, becoming an apprentice sailor on the Jewish ship Hechalutz in the same year.Halpern assisted in the defence of Jews of the Old City of Jerusalem during the 1920 Palestine riots
1920 Palestine riots
The 1920 Palestine riots, or Nabi Musa riots, took place in British Mandate of Palestine April 4–7, 1920 in and around the Old City of Jerusalem....
. Subsequently, he was a leader of Betar
Betar
The Betar Movement is a Revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 in Riga, Latvia, by Vladimir Jabotinsky. It has been traditionally linked to the original Herut and then Likud political parties of Israel, and was closely affiliated with the pre-Israel Revisionist Zionist splinter group...
, the Revisionist youth movement, and headed the Betar School of Instruction. On taking up permanent residence in Palestine in 1933 Halpern was associated primarily with the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation. He was also in charge of military training for the World Betar movement.
In later years he was associated with the Irgun
Irgun
The Irgun , or Irgun Zevai Leumi to give it its full title , was a Zionist paramilitary group that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewish paramilitary organization haHaganah...
underground group in Palestine and Europe, undertook various Revisionist missions to the United States between 1939 and 1941 and was active in Hillel Kook
Hillel Kook
Hillel Kook , also known as Peter Bergson , was a Revisionist Zionist activist, politician, and prominent member of the Irgun.-Early life:...
's Bergson Group.
In the early 1940s Halpern worked with Lord Stabolgi to achieve the objectives of Bergson's Committee for a Jewish Army, a campaign which was endorsed enthusiastically by the Jewish Chronicle, but which antagonised the Zionist establishment because of its association with Jabotinsky's New Zionist Organization.
The Training School for Betar Instructors
Halepern established the Training School for Betar InstructorsTraining School for Betar Instructors
The Training School for Betar Instructors was founded in Tel Aviv in 1928 as a military academy for revisionist youth in Palestine....
(or Betar 'madricihim,' also often translated as 'youth guides' or 'youth leaders') in Tel Aviv in 1928, serving as its first director. Halpern recruited Abba Ahimeir
Abba Ahimeir
Abba Ahimeir was a Jewish journalist, historian and political activist. One of the ideologues of Revisionist Zionism, he was the founder of the Revisionist Maximalist faction of the Zionist Revisionist Movement and of the clandestine Brit HaBirionim....
as an instructor of the nationalist youth and together the pair led the School in an increasingly radical direction in which military training was viewed as a means of establishing the military wing of a national liberation movement.
Under the leadership of Halpern (and later of Ahimeir) the 24 cadets took the lead in organising demonstrative activities outside Betar, which notably included taking the initiative in the march to the Western Wall in August 1929.
Halpern's cadets later formed the nucleus for the right-wing Maximalist
Revisionist Maximalism
Revisionist Maximalism was a Jewish fascist ideology which was part of the Brit HaBirionim faction of the Zionist Revisionist Movement created by Abba Ahimeir. Revisionist Maximalists strongly supported the Italian fascist regime of Benito Mussolini and wanted the creation of an Israel based on...
tendency in Revisionism and the activities of Halpern and Ahimeir contributed to the evolution of the Irgun and to the support of Revisionist Maximalism within Betar.
1929 Riots in Palestine
On 15 August, the Jewish fast of Tisha B'AvTisha B'Av
|Av]],") is an annual fast day in Judaism, named for the ninth day of the month of Av in the Hebrew calendar. The fast commemorates the destruction of both the First Temple and Second Temple in Jerusalem, which occurred about 655 years apart, but on the same Hebrew calendar date...
, three hundred Revisionist youths from the Battalion for the Defence of the Language
Battalion for the Defence of the Language
The Battalion for the Defence of the Language was a small but militant body established by Jewish students at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium in Tel Aviv, Palestine in the 1920s to urge Jews to use only the Hebrew language....
and Betar, who were led by Halpern, marched to the Western Wall proclaiming "The Wall is ours". The protesters raised the Zionist flag
Flag of Israel
The flag of Israel was adopted on October 28, 1948, five months after the country's establishment. It depicts a blue Star of David on a white background, between two horizontal blue stripes...
and sang the Hatikvah
Hatikvah
"Hatikvah" is the national anthem of Israel. The anthem was written by Naphtali Herz Imber, a secular Galician Jew from Zolochiv , who moved to the Land of Israel in the early 1880s....
and were said to have insulted the Prophet
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
, Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
, and the Muslim community at large and also to have beat up Muslim residents. The demonstration took place in the Muslim Maghribi district in front of the Mufti's house.
Two days later, in raised tensions caused by a 2000-strong Muslim counter-demonstration after Friday prayers the day before, a Jewish youth, Avraham Mizrahi, was killed and an Arab youth picked at random was stabbed in retaliation. Subsequently, the violence escalated into rioting throughout Palestine
1929 Palestine riots
The 1929 Palestine riots, also known as the Western Wall Uprising, the 1929 Massacres, , or the Buraq Uprising , refers to a series of demonstrations and riots in late August 1929 when a long-running dispute between Muslims and Jews over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem escalated into violence...
.
The demonstration by Revisionist youth of 15 August was later identified as the proximal cause of the riots by the Shaw Commission.
The Brit HaHayal
Halpern was world commander of the Brit HaHayalBrit HaHayal
The Brit HaHayal was a Revisionist Zionist association of Jewish reservists in the Polish Army formed in December, 1932 in Radom. The first branch was established Warsaw in February 1933 with the aim of "taking part in the struggle of the Jewish people for the reconstruction of the Jewish State on...
a Revisionist association of Jewish reservists in the Polish Army
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
that grew into a world organisation with regional military and political training schools for members.
By 1939 Brit HaHayal had 25,000 members worldwide.
The Betar Naval Academy
Under the direction of Jabotinsky the Betar Naval AcademyBetar Naval Academy
The Betar Naval Academy was a Jewish naval training school established in Civitavecchia, Italy in 1934 by the Revisionist Zionist movement under the direction of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, with tha agreement of Benito Mussolini....
was established in Civitavecchia
Civitavecchia
Civitavecchia is a town and comune of the province of Rome in the central Italian region of Lazio. A sea port on the Tyrrhenian Sea, it is located 80 kilometers west-north-west of Rome, across the Mignone river. The harbor is formed by two piers and a breakwater, on which is a lighthouse...
, taly
Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)
The Kingdom of Italy was a state forged in 1861 by the unification of Italy under the influence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which was its legal predecessor state...
in 1934. The titular head was the Italian maritime scientist Nicola Fusco but Jeremiah Halpern ran the School and was its driving force. The School trained cadets from all over Europe, Palestine and South Africa and produced some of the future commanders of the Israeli Navy.
Although the Revisionists were keen to ensure that trainees avoided local Fascist politics
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
the cadets did express public support for Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
's regime, as Halpern later detailed in his book History of Hebrew Seamanship. Cadets marched alongside Italian soldiers in support of the Second Italo–Abyssinian War and collected metal scraps for the Italian weapons industry. They "felt as if they were living the true Beitarist life in an atmosphere of herosim, militarism, and nationalistic pride."
The Academy closed in 1938.
World War II
At the outbreak of World War II Halpern was sent to negotiate with the CanadianCanada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
Admiralty for the establishment of a Jewish Naval School to train members of a special Jewish unit for the British Army.
In 1942 Halpern opened a school for frogmen in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, established a school for skipper cadets in London and was successful in attracting support from British officers and members of the Rothschild family
Rothschild family
The Rothschild family , known as The House of Rothschild, or more simply as the Rothschilds, is a Jewish-German family that established European banking and finance houses starting in the late 18th century...
. Around 350 officers, mechanics and fishermen graduated from these schools.
Post-war activities
Halpern returned to Israel in 1948 and lived in Eilat, where he studied oceanographyOceanography
Oceanography , also called oceanology or marine science, is the branch of Earth science that studies the ocean...
and founded the Eilat Naval Museum, which was subsequently named after him.
In 1951 Halpern proposed to David Ben-Gurion
David Ben-Gurion
' was the first Prime Minister of Israel.Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader and Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946...
to re-organise the Israeli commercial and military Marine Corps and to establish a research programme to explore the natural resources of the Red Sea
Red Sea
The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez...
.
In 1959 Halpern proposed an Eliat Canal as an alternative to the Suez Canal
Suez Canal
The Suez Canal , also known by the nickname "The Highway to India", is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Opened in November 1869 after 10 years of construction work, it allows water transportation between Europe and Asia without navigation...
.
Halpern wrote a number of books, including Tĕḥiyat ha-yamaʼut ha-ʻIvrit (1960) and Avi, Mikhaʼel Helpern (1964).
Commemoration
Halpern's contribution to Hebrew seamanship is commemorated by a research scholarship offered by the University of Haifa's Department of Maritime Civilizations.In addition to the scholarship the Halpern Foundation funded a research boat, the RV Halpern (launched September, 2005), for faculty members and students of the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies at the University of Haifa.