Prominent Russian rabbi; a founder and leader of the Zionist movement. He founded the first Hoveve Zion society in Warsaw in 1882, at a time when Orthodox opinion frowned on any active attempt to bring about the return to Zion. In 1891, Rabbi Mohilever visited Baron Maurice de Hirsch and successfully pleaded with him to found Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine instead of Argentina. When Theodor Herzl began to work for political Zionism, Mohilever delivered a stirring message to the first Zionist Congress in 1897, supporting him.