Ben Ami (disambiguation)

Ben-Ami was the pseudonym of Mark (Mordechai) Iakovlevich Rabinovich (c. 1854–1932), a writer, publicist, and early Zionist theorist.[1] Born in a small town near Mogilev, he spent part of his childhood in Bessarabia in a Hasidic family; his father died when he was four and became, in his inner and fictional world, a symbol of an idealized lost paradise.[1]

His first encounter with Odessa, at around age ten, left a deep impression: in his writing, the city represented material life and the Russification he believed erased Jewish identity, religion, and language.[1] Writing in Russian, he sought to introduce Jewish traditions to educated readers. In Paris in 1881, following the first wave of pogroms, he worked as a delegate for the 'Am 'Olam organization.[1] After relocating to Geneva with his wife Klara in 1882, he contributed stories and philosophical reviews to the Russian Jewish periodical Voskhod.[1]

Returning to Odessa in 1886, Ben-Ami participated in early "Palestinophile" organizations.[1] In 1897, a week before the First Zionist Congress, he met Theodor Herzl in Basel and helped organize the event.[1] His conception of Zionism was distinctive: rather than embracing political Zionism, he connected the future Jewish state's role closely to religious and spiritual life, contrasting those aims with what he characterized as Roman physical supremacy.[1]

Ben-Ami left the Russian Empire permanently in 1905 and spent roughly two decades in Geneva before reaching Haifa, presumably in 1924, then moving to Tel Aviv in 1925.[1] There he was in contact with Ḥayim Naḥman Bialik and Ahad Ha-Am.[1] Most of his work appeared in the Russian Jewish periodical press and was rediscovered only later. His story collection, Sobranie rasskazov i ocherkov (Collection of Short Stories and Essays), published in Odessa in 1898, depicted impoverished but spiritually rich Jewish life in the shtetl and the city.[1]

Shlomo Ben-Ami (born July 17, 1943, in Tangiers, Morocco) is an Israeli diplomat, politician, and historian.[2] He immigrated to Israel in 1955 and went on to study at Tel Aviv University and Oxford, where he earned a doctorate in history.[2] He headed Tel Aviv University's School of History from 1982 to 1986 and taught at Oxford from 1980 to 1982.[3] He later served as Israel's professor emeritus of history at Tel Aviv University and as vice president of the Toledo International Centre for Peace.[4]

Ben-Ami served as Israel's ambassador to Spain from 1987 to 1991 and participated in the Israeli delegation to the Middle East Peace Conference in Madrid in October 1991.[3] He entered the Knesset in 1996 as a Labor Party candidate and served on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and its Sub-committee on Foreign Service.[2] In 1997 he unsuccessfully challenged Ehud Barak for the Labor Party secretary-general position; his platform at that time called for greater Labor attention to the religious traditions and economic needs of Israel's Sephardi population.[5][3] He was reelected to the Knesset in 1999 for One Israel and again in 2001 for Labor.[2]

After Ehud Barak became prime minister, Ben-Ami was appointed Minister of Public Security on July 7, 1999.[6][3] In May 2000 he held secret conversations with Palestinian leaders in preparation for that summer's negotiations.[3] He was subsequently appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs on August 10, 2000, while retaining the internal-security portfolio.[3] He represented Israel at the July 2000 Camp David summit, where he negotiated with Palestinians, presented maps, and served as an intermediary between Barak and U.S. officials Madeleine Albright and Bill Clinton.[7] The summit ended without agreement.[7]

Ben-Ami also participated in a secret Washington meeting with Palestinian leaders on September 26, 2000, a three-day session conducted under U.S. envoy Dennis Ross that likewise failed to restart the peace process.[3] He took part in the subsequent Taba talks, which also concluded without a result.[7] After Barak's defeat by Ariel Sharon, Ben-Ami resigned his ministerial functions in March 2001.[3] He formally announced his resignation from the Knesset in August 2002, citing the Labor Party's continued participation in the national-unity government and criticizing what he described as the government's security, diplomatic, and social-welfare failures.[8] He stated that he would remain in the Labor Party.[8]

Oved Ben-Ami (1905–1988) was a founder and longtime mayor of Netanya.[9] He served as the first secretary of the Beni Binyamin Union, described as the first moshav organization, which was established to found settlements through private land sales in the then largely unsettled Sharon region.[9] He founded Netanya, guided its development into a city, and led it for decades.[10]

After his wife Yaffa's death, their daughter discovered a small suitcase containing hundreds of letters — many written during Oved's long journeys on behalf of public causes, and others sent from Latrun, where the British had detained him.[10]

Jeremy Ben-Ami is the president of J Street, the American Jewish political advocacy organization.[11] His family's ties to Israel span generations: his great-grandparents were among the first settlers in Petah Tikva, his grandparents were among Tel Aviv's founding families, and his father was an Irgun activist involved in Israel's independence and the rescue of European Jews before and during World War II.[11]

Jeremy Ben-Ami served as a White House deputy domestic policy advisor to President Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s and as Howard Dean's national policy director in 2004.[11] He lived in Israel for nearly three years in the late 1990s and holds degrees from NYU Law School and Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School.[11]

Yitzhak Ben-Ami (June 11, 1913, Tel Aviv – December 31, 1984, New York City) was a businessman, Zionist leader, and Irgun member.[12] He attended Hebrew University, moved to the United States in 1939, and served as a World War II serviceman.[12] He co-founded the American Friends for a Jewish Palestine and served as executive director of the American League for a Free Palestine.[12]

According to Samuel Merlin's account, Ben-Ami arrived in the United States in March 1939 as a resident Irgun emissary and opened an American Friends for a Jewish Palestine office at 285 Madison Avenue in New York.[13] Merlin writes that he had previously worked in Nazi-occupied Austria, negotiating arrangements for Jews to leave German-controlled territories, and that fundraising for unauthorized immigration to Palestine became a central part of his mission.[13] The account credits him with raising the remaining funds after other contributions had covered part of the SS Sakarya's £14,500 charter cost. The ship carried approximately 2,400 Jewish refugees stranded near the mouth of the Danube; the money was forwarded in January 1940, and the ship reached Palestine on February 1.[13] On arrival in Haifa, about 400 women and children were freed, while approximately 1,900 others were interned at Atlit and released six months later.[13]

Jacob Shieren Ben-Ami (December 23, 1890, Minsk – July 22, 1977) was a Yiddish and English actor and director based in New York City.[12] He immigrated to the United States in 1912 and co-founded the Odessa Jewish Theatre and the Yiddish Art Theatre.[12]

Ben Ami Ben-Israel — born Ben Carter (also rendered Ben-Ami Carter) — was the founder and leader of the African Hebrew Israelites of Dimona.[14][15] In 1966 he experienced a vision in which he believed the angel Gabriel told him that Israel was the Promised Land.[14] As race riots swept the United States, he led thousands of followers first to Liberia and then to Israel's Negev desert.[14]

The group described itself as the "true" Jews, characterized Israeli citizens as "trustees" of the land, and advocated replacing them with Black people returning to what they considered the Promised Land — a doctrine that troubled the Israeli government.[14] Ben-Israel established an African Hebrew Israelites congregation in Chicago in the 1960s, and the movement held that the biblical Hebrews were Black and had a claim to Israel as their homeland.[15]

The Israeli government found that the group's population was growing as members overstayed tourist visas and began barring further entries, while debating whether the group qualified for citizenship under the Law of Return.[14] After years of negotiations, the group's members obtained Israeli citizenship in 1990.[15] The community, numbering around 5,000, came to be regarded as well-integrated into Israeli society.[15] The African Hebrew Israelites now live in Israel and operate Neve Shalom ("Village of Peace"), described as one of Israel's largest and most successful urban kibbutzim.[14]

Moshav Ben Ami is a village located in the Western Galilee, just outside Nahariya on Route 89.[16] It was established in 1949 by members of the Haganah battalion whose convoy had been ambushed nearby and takes its name from Ben Ami Pachter, the convoy commander who was killed in that attack.[17]

The convoy departed on March 27, 1948, carrying seven trucks loaded with ammunition and supplies from Haifa to the besieged Kibbutz Yehiam.[17][18] Pachter was shot while leaning out of an armored vehicle to warn those behind him; his driver continued on with the commander's body and reached the kibbutz.[18] Forty-seven Haganah fighters were killed in the attack.[18] The moshav founded in the area the following year honors his memory through its name. Tourism has become an important support for the village, with activities including hiking, cycling, jeep tours, and fruit picking.[16]

Several facts associated with the Ben-Ami name carry notable controversy. The African Hebrew Israelites movement launched an antisemitic propaganda campaign in 1977, including accusations against Jews in American publications and calls to halt aid to Israel and boycott Jewish-owned businesses and political candidates.[14] Publications associated with the group at that time featured hostile content directed at Israeli leaders.[14]

Accounts of the Camp David and Taba negotiations in which Shlomo Ben-Ami participated remain politically contested terrain; the characterizations of those talks reflect particular journalistic and political perspectives rather than a settled historical consensus.[7][3] Ben-Ami's own assessment of Labor Party failures, expressed in his 2002 resignation letter, represents his stated political position.[8]

The identification of Yitzhak Ben-Ami relies partly on Samuel Merlin's memoir, which reflects an Irgun-affiliated perspective on disputes within the Zionist movement of the 1930s and 1940s; its characterizations of competing organizations should be read as attributed claims rather than neutral history.[13]