Menahem Ussishkin was born in 1863 in a wealthy Jewish family in Dubrovno, Mogilev Province. Becoming a merchant of the first guild, his father received the right to move with his family to Moscow. From childhood, Menachem's father took care of the traditional Hasidic education for his son, but did not limit himself to it: Menachem graduated from a real school, and later - the Imperial Moscow Technical School. A wave of Jewish pogroms in Russia in the 1880s led the young Ussishkin to the Zionist movement.
In 1891, Menachem visited Palestine for the first time with his young wife Esther Paley. Since then, the young people have settled in Katerynoslav for a decade and a half, where his wife's family lived. Here Ussishkin was formed as the leader of the Zionist movement, here his program of “synthetic Zionism” was formed. It was based on the ideas of a single home for Jews, which was to become Land of-Israel (Ussishkin insisted on its immediate self-settlement), and one language - Hebrew (he was an active opponent of Yiddish). He supported the idea of encouraging the manual labor of Jews in Palestine.
Menachem Ussishkin was opposed to any Jewish state project outside of the Land of Israel. On this occasion, the conflict between him and Theodor Herzl, who came up with the plan “Uganda”, which provided for the development of a Jewish state center in Africa, in modern Kenya. At Ussishkin 's initiative, the Zionist Congress convened in Kharkiv to adopt a collective demand to close the Uganda project and focus exclusively on the development of Palestine. When Herzl later asked Ussishkin: “Do you really believe that we can get Palestine?”, The latter openly replied: “Yes, I do. And if you do not believe, then you should not lead the Zionist movement.”
In 1906, M. Ussishkin became an elected chairman of the Odessa Zionist Committee, in connection with which he moved from Ekaterinoslav to Odessa and lived there until he moved to the Land of Israel in 1919.
During the First World War, Ussishkin resisted the creation of the Jewish Legion. In his opinion, the Zionists should not get involved in interstate conflicts, because the victory over Germany and its allies could lead to the triumph of the Anti-Semitic Russian autocracy.
In 1923, M. Ussishkin headed the Jewish National Fund, in which position he coordinated the purchase of land in Palestine for Jewish projects. He was sometimes accused of spending large sums on low-value desert lands, but Menachem Ussishkin believed that the inspired work of young Jews could turn the Land of Israel into an oasis in the desert. Life has proved the correctness of the beliefs of politicians.
In 1925, M. Ussishkin helped buy land on Mount Scopus - for the opening of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He was elected a member of the board of trustees and the board of this educational institution.
Menachem Ussishkin died in 1941, in Jerusalem, just a few years before the official proclamation of the State of Israel. Fortunately, he did not survive the terrible shock of the Holocaust. Those who survived the Catastrophe owe it to Ussishkin to receive the Promised Land. M. Ussishkin is buried in Jerusalem in the cave of Nicanor on Mount Scopus. Streets and squares in the cities of Israel are named after him, a group of settlements in the Upper Galilee are collectively called "Ussishkin Fortress".