PINELES, SAMUEL (1843–1928), early member of Hovevei Zion and the Zionist Movement in Romania. Born in Brody, Galicia, the son of Hirsch Mendel *Pineles, he moved with his family to Galati, Romania, in 1863. Early in his youth he began his activity in the Ḥibbat Zion movement, and submitted to the central board of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris periodical information and documents concerning Romanian Jewry. In 1881 he was elected to the board of the Romanian Association for the settlement of Ereẓ Israel. He took part in the conference of the settlement societies held in Focsani in January 1882 and was elected chairman of the central board, situated in Galati. Pineles did much for the Romanian immigrants and their two settlements in Palestine, Rosh Pinnah and Zamarin (later known as Zikhron Ya'akov). As chairman of the central board, he mobilized resources from Baron Edmond de *Rothschild for the purpose of purchasing lands in the Golan to be settled by Romanian Jews. He participated in all of the first ten congresses and was a member of the Zionist General Council. He was one of the founders of the *Jewish Colonial Trust. In 1909 he gave the *Jewish National Fund 30,000 francs, which he had received from Rothschild for the lands in the Golan acquired by Romanian members of Ḥibbat Zion. In 1920 he took part in the Committee for Jewish refugees who went to Galati after the pogroms in Ukraine. In 1965 his remains were reinterred in Jerusalem.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

I. Klausner, Ḥibbat Ẓiyyon be-Rumanyah (1958), index; L. Jaffe (ed.), Sefer ha-Congress (1950²), 348–9.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.

Samuel Pineles