Though most famous as the one-armed defender of Tel Hai, Yosef Trumpeldor was also a Russian patriot, dentist, and pre-kibbutz pioneer of agricultural collectives in the land of Israel. He also cofounded the Jewish Legion, which fought with the British army in World War I. The man behind the hero

Ten years before World War I, Yosef Trumpeldor fought in the Russo-Japanese War – essentially the first modern military conflict – and was captured in the fall of Port Arthur, in Manchuria. As a Russian patriot determined to prove that Jews were no cowards, this prisoner of war wrote an open letter (unsent due to political developments in Russia) to Tsar Nicholas II: 

If we’d all had to give our lives in defense of (Port) Arthur, we would have done so without a second thought. For we knew very well that five million [Jews] were watching us from Russia, suffering all the pain together with us, supporting us with all their might, and hoping we’d truly do our duty. We knew they had no rights in Russia. We shouldered the full weight of that lack of rights […]. We’ve long sought an opportunity to throw ourselves at your feet, asking that you grant all Russian Jews [the same] rights as all the other peoples living in Russia. (Dov Ber Kotlerman, “Yosef Trumpeldor’s Experience as a Prisoner of War in Japan and Its Impact on His Zionist Vision,” in Tel Hai 1920–2020, Between History and Memory, ed. Yael Zerubavel and Amir Goldstein [Yad Ben Zvi, 2020], p. 69 [Hebrew])

Many of the sentiments expressed in this 1905 missive encapsulate the ideals for which Trumpeldor fought valiantly throughout his career: Jewish solidarity and unity, equality, and above all a sense that his life transcended its individual value and could inspire the Jewish people as a whole. 

By the time he formed the British army’s Zion Mule Corps in World War I, Trumpeldor was already the most decorated Jewish soldier in history. His belief in Jewish defense galvanized youth all over Russia to focus on a new dream – a Jewish homeland in Zion.

 

Second Generation

Wolf (Ze’ev) Trumpeldor was a cantonist, one of countless Jewish boys conscripted into the tsar’s army. Snatched from his family at age thirteen, Trumpeldor was among the few who maintained their Jewish identity despite extensive pressure to conform. Eventually discharged, he was entitled to settle outside the Pale of Settlement (today’s Ukraine and Belarus) and chose Pyatigorsk, a resort town in the foothills of the Russian Caucasus. 

Osip (or Osiya, as his friends called him) was born in November 1880 to Wolf Trumpeldor’s second wife, an assimilated Jew (although she subsequently became more traditional). The boy suffered through a few months of heder, but most of his schooling was in Russian institutions. He devoured Russian literature, particularly Tolstoy’s works, which shaped many of Osip’s later choices. The family relocated to the larger town of Rostov-on-Don, where he excelled at high school. 

By 1902, young Trumpeldor was a dentist and Zionist. As a university graduate, he was exempt from the draft but enlisted anyway, despite the pacifism he’d absorbed while working at a Tolstoyan agricultural collective near his birthplace. Determined to disprove the Russian stereotype of Jewish cowardice, he fought at the Russo-Japanese front rather than simply serving his country through his profession. 

What transformed the young Russian patriot into a Zionist leader? 

Though legally defined a Jew in tsarist Russia, culturally Trumpeldor was more of a Russian philo-Semite than an assimilated Russian Jew. (Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, “Yosef Trumpeldor’s ‘War and Peace’: From Zionist Hagiography to Cultural History,” in ibid., p. 48)

Trumpeldor’s appreciation of the simple, stoic farmer and soldier, his admiration for the people of the book, and his devotion to the oppressed were all rooted in Tolstoy. Self-sacrifice in the line of duty was his guiding light in the battle for Port Arthur, in which he lost his lower left arm to shrapnel. Even after his injury, he demanded a pistol and sword and returned to the front, earning four medals for bravery, including the Cross of St. George. In addition, though never commissioned, he frequently filled in for wounded or absent officers.

Russia surrendered Port Arthur in January 1905, and its garrison was taken captive. The Japanese divided these prisoners of war by origin, placing Trumpeldor for the first time among Jews from the Pale of Settlement. Under his leadership, the group set up a synagogue and celebrated Jewish holidays. Beyond these religious activities, he organized classes in reading and basic arithmetic for any Russian captive interested and even founded a Zionist association, Bnei Zion in Captivity in Japan.