SCHUB, MOSHE DAVID

SCHUB, MOSHE DAVID (1854–1938), Ereẓ Israel pioneer. Born in Moineşti, *Romania, Schub was a shoḥet in his home town. As early as the 1870s he was among the founders of an association for settlement in Ereẓ Israel, which sent him to buy land there in 1882. He acquired the abandoned settlement Jaʿūna near Safed. At the end of that year *Rosh Pinnah was established on this land, Schub was elected head of its committee and obtained permission from the Turkish authorities in *Damascus to build houses there. When the settlement came under the patronage of Baron *Rothschild, Schub refused to cooperate with Rothschild's officials, gave up his land, and became headmaster of the first Hebrew school in the settlement. In 1891 he under took the management of the new settlement *Mishmar ha-Yarden and was later manager of *Ein Zeitim. At the invitation of Ḥovevei Zion he went to Germany in 1896 to run the exhibition of Jewish settlements in the Holy Land held in *Berlin and Cologne. There he met Theodor *Herzl, became one of his ardent supporters, and accompanied him on his visit to Ereẓ Israel in 1898.

He wrote many articles in Hebrew, Yiddish, and German on the problems of Jewish agricultural settlement. His writings include a history of the settlement, Yesud ha-Ma'alah (1931), and his memoirs, Zikhronot le-Veit David (1937), which is also a valuable source on the early history of Jewish settlement in Ereẓ Israel.

bibliography:

I. Klausner, Ḥibbat Ẓiyyon be-Romanyah (1951), index; idem, Mi-Katoviẓ ad Basel (1965), index.

[Yehuda Slutsky]