Eliyahu Golomb

Eliyahu Golomb (March 2, 1893–June 11, 1945), also known as Eliyahu Ben-Naftali, was one of the founders and principal leaders of the Haganah. During the Mandate period, he helped shape the organization into a broad, publicly directed Jewish defense force. His contribution extended far beyond the acquisition of weapons: Golomb linked self-defense with settlement, labor, immigration and national institutions, helping create the organizational foundations from which Israel’s future defense establishment would emerge.

From the Herzliya Gymnasium to the idea of defense

Golomb was born in Volkovysk, in the Grodno Governorate of the Russian Empire, now in western Belarus, to Naftali and Esther née Kellar. As a child he studied in a cheder and at a Russian gymnasium, where he encountered Russian literature and revolutionary ideas. In 1909, his parents sent him to Palestine to study at the Herzliya Gymnasium. They immigrated in 1911 and settled in Tel Aviv, where his father established a flour mill in Jaffa, continuing the family business in Russia.

Golomb graduated with the first class of the Herzliya Gymnasium in 1913. His classmates included Moshe Sharett and Dov Hoz, who later became his brothers-in-law. After graduation, Golomb and his classmates organized the “Compact Organization of Gymnasium Graduates,” the first pioneering training nucleus of working youth in Palestine. The group worked at Degania Alef and Kinneret, seeking to combine labor, settlement and mutual responsibility.

The murders of Moshe Barsky and Yosef Zaltzman, members of the group or its immediate circle, in November 1913 deeply affected Golomb and his companions. He concluded that agricultural work and settlement could not endure without the ability to defend them. For Golomb, the union of labor and defense was not merely a military principle; it was a condition for establishing a lasting Jewish presence in the land.

From personal humiliation to national initiative

After his father’s death in 1914, Golomb returned to Tel Aviv to manage the family flour mill. During this period, Hassan Bey, the Ottoman military governor of Jaffa, ordered him to continue grinding flour on the Sabbath. Religious workers refused, and Golomb came to understand that the dispute was not simply about operating a mill. It concerned the ability of Jews to observe their commandments and conduct communal life under foreign rule. After refusing to comply, he was punished with flogging.

The experience left Golomb humiliated and powerless. He initially considered taking personal revenge and even obtained a pistol, but his friend Dov Hoz persuaded him that killing Hassan Bey would not improve the situation of the Jewish community and might bring reprisals against other Jews. Instead of an isolated act of revenge, the two men decided to work toward a nationwide defense organization. This was a decisive transition from individual reaction to national institution-building.

Golomb opposed recruitment into the Ottoman army, believing that the empire was in decline. In 1917, after the British conquest of Palestine, he volunteered for the Jewish Legion. At the end of the First World War he established the “Jaffa Group,” which prepared for self-defense and maintained ties with Hashomer.

Building the Haganah as a national organization

The Haganah was established in June 1920. Golomb was among its founders and supported the dissolution of Hashomer in favor of a broader and more coordinated framework. He debated Hashomer leaders, including Israel Shohat, but his larger contribution was conceptual and institutional: he helped define the Haganah as a popular organization open to anyone capable of defending the community and accountable to public and political leadership.

Golomb served on the Haganah’s Central Committee from 1920 to 1930 and on its National Headquarters from 1931 until 1945. For many years he was its practical and intellectual leader, earning the later description “the unofficial commander.” He worked to place the Haganah within an institutional framework, first under the Histadrut and later under the National Institutions.

This effort gave the organization a public base, resources and internal legitimacy. The Haganah was intended to defend life, property and personal dignity, but also the Zionist enterprise itself: its settlements, agricultural communities and capacity to function as a national society. Under Golomb’s influence, defense became not merely an emergency response but a permanent system of recruitment, training, communications, procurement and leadership.

Arms procurement, European networks and young pioneers

One of Golomb’s most demanding responsibilities was procuring weapons abroad. Between 1922 and 1924 he was sent to Europe on behalf of the Haganah, working mainly through Vienna, Paris and Berlin to purchase arms and organize groups of young pioneers. The work required contacts, planning and secrecy under conditions of scarcity and danger. It connected the Yishuv’s security needs with Jewish and pioneering networks in Europe.

Golomb understood that a defense force could not be built through weapons alone. It also required education, settlement and a generation prepared to accept collective responsibility. He therefore linked defense-building with the organization of young pioneers, seeking to form people ready for labor, settlement and security service alike.

Public, political and national activity

Golomb was among the founders of the Ahdut HaAvoda movement and the Histadrut, the General Federation of Labor. He served on the National Committee and represented his party at Zionist Congresses. His public work complemented his security activity: he wanted the Haganah to function as part of the Yishuv’s institutions rather than as an independent force detached from public decision-making.

During the Mandate period, Golomb helped organize Aliyah Bet, the clandestine immigration of Jews to Palestine despite British restrictions. During the Holocaust, he was among the initiators of a plan to parachute Haganah agents into Europe. These efforts reveal the breadth of his understanding of Jewish defense. It meant not only protecting settlements in Palestine, but also helping Jews reach the country, maintaining ties with communities abroad and developing the ability to act on behalf of Jews beyond the borders of the Yishuv.

Family, writings and commemoration

Golomb married Ada Sharett, the younger sister of Moshe Sharett. They had three children: Dikla, David and Dalia. Their son David later became a member of the Knesset. The couple also raised Harry, the son of Ada’s younger sister, Geula Sharett, and he took the Golomb family name. Harry Golomb later became a theater scholar and an associate professor at Tel Aviv University.

Golomb also contributed to documenting and interpreting the history of Jewish defense. His publications included the pamphlet Main Points in the History of the Settlement’s Defense, as well as collections of his writings and posthumous studies of the Haganah’s development. These works helped preserve the memory of the organization’s origins, the challenges it faced and the decisions that shaped its path.

Golomb died of a cerebral hemorrhage at his home in Tel Aviv on June 11, 1945, and was buried in Trumpeldor Cemetery. His memory has been preserved in streets, neighborhoods and institutions, including Yad Eliyahu in Tel Aviv and Kibbutz Nir Eliyahu; in cultural centers such as Beit Eliyahu at Kibbutz Revivim; and in the immigrant ships Eliyahu Golomb and Dalin. The Israel Security Award, presented by the President of Israel since 1958, was named after him. In 1978, Israel Post issued a stamp commemorating his memory.

His Tel Aviv home on Rothschild Boulevard, known as Beit Eliyahu, served for many years as part of the Haganah headquarters. It now houses the Haganah Museum, the Haganah Archives and the offices of the Haganah Members Organization. The building therefore became more than a memorial: it is a working site where the history of Jewish self-defense is preserved, researched and presented to the public.

Why Eliyahu Golomb’s legacy belongs in Moreshet

Eliyahu Golomb merits a prominent place in a heritage archive because his work touched several foundations of Jewish and Israeli life: self-defense, public responsibility, settlement, Hebrew labor, immigration and national institutions. He helped establish a popular and organized defense force, worked to place it under public authority, procured weapons, organized young pioneers in Europe and contributed to Aliyah Bet and plans for action on behalf of European Jewry.

His influence is also visible in the fact that the Haganah did not remain an abstract memory. It became a human and organizational infrastructure from which Israel’s future defense force would develop. The Haganah Museum and Archives at Beit Eliyahu preserve that story and allow later generations to understand how the idea of Jewish defense became a national institution. For these reasons, Golomb is a natural subject for Moreshet: his life represents the transformation of Zionist aspiration into organized action, and the connection between security, community and the building of a national home. Moreshet.com provides a meaningful place to encounter that legacy and understand its effect on the Yishuv and on the Israeli society that emerged from it.