GOLDBERG, BORIS

GOLDBERG, BORIS (1865–1922), economist and Zionist. Born in Shaki (Sakiai), Lithuania, Goldberg studied at Hanover, where he graduated in 1891 as a chemical engineer. In 1898 he moved to Vilna. He joined the Ḥibbat Zion movement at an early age, and when the Zionist Organization was founded, joined it at once. Goldberg was an ardent supporter of practical settlement work in Ereẓ Israel. He contributed articles to all existing Jewish periodicals in Russia, was a member of the editorial board of Razsvet and Ha-Olam, and published studies on the demographic and social composition of Russian Jewry. Goldberg was a member of the Central Office of the Zionist Organization in Vilna, and, together with his brother I.L. *Goldberg, he headed the illegal Zionist activities in the Vilna region, for which he was imprisoned on several occasions. In 1906 he took part in the work of the League for Equal Rights for Russian Jews, and in 1917 he was a member of the National Council of Russian Jews. He left Russia in 1919 as a representative of Russian Jews to the Comité des Délégations Juives, which represented the Jewish people at the Versailles Peace Conference. He helped to transfer the capital of Russian Jews to Palestine and was one of the founders of the Ha-Boneh Company and the Silikat building materials factory in Tel Aviv. He was wounded during the Arab riots of 1921 and died a year later in Tel Aviv.

bibliography:

N. Sokolow, History of Zionism, 2 (1919), index; I. Klausner, Mi-Kattoviẓ ad Basel, 2 vols. (1965), index; Tidhar, 1 (1947), 293, 483–4.

[Yehuda Slutsky]