Israel Eldad

Israel Eldad was born in 1910 in Pidvolochysk

Israel Eldad was born Israel Scheib in 1910 in Pidvolochysk, Galicia, to a traditional Jewish family. During the First World War his family wandered as refugees.

He studied at the Rabbinical Seminary of Vienna and at the University of Vienna, where he earned a doctorate in philosophy in 1933. He then taught in Poland, including at the Jewish Teachers Seminary in Vilna, and rose in the ranks of Betar.

He immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1941 and joined Lehi, using the aliases Sambatyon and Eldad. After Avraham Stern was killed in 1942, he led Lehi with Yitzhak Shamir and Natan Yellin-Mor. He was arrested in 1944 after a fall while fleeing, and Lehi fighters freed him in June 1946.

After the state was founded he published the journal Sulam and wrote for several newspapers. Ben-Gurion had him dismissed as a teacher, and he won in the High Court of Justice, yet schools still refused to hire him. He lectured at the Technion from 1963 to 1982 and then at the college that became Ariel University.

He translated many works into Hebrew, including the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. He died in 1996 and was buried on the Mount of Olives beside Uri Zvi Greenberg.