Isidor Schalit

Isidor Schalit was born in 1871 in Ukraine

Isidor Schalit was born in 1871 in the village of Novoselky in the southwest of the Russian Empire, in today's Ukraine. As a baby he moved with his family to Vienna, where he grew up. His brothers were the writer Leon Schalit and the pianist and composer Heinrich Schalit.

While studying medicine at the University of Vienna, he joined the Jewish national student society Kadimah in 1889 and became its president in 1893. After his studies he worked as a dentist in Vienna.

He was a close aide and personal secretary to Theodor Herzl. He helped organize the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, served as the first secretary of the Small Actions Committee from 1897 to 1905, and published and edited the Zionist paper Die Welt. At the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901 he headed the committee that set up the Jewish National Fund.

From 1905 he headed the Zionist Organization in Austria and led an effort to win recognition of Jewish autonomy. In 1907 he was elected to the Greater Actions Committee and ran for the Austrian parliament for Leopoldstadt in Vienna.

He moved to the Land of Israel in 1938. In 1949 the State of Israel sent him to oversee the transfer of the remains of Herzl and his family from Vienna to Jerusalem. He died in 1954 and was buried in Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv.