Epstein was born in Ruzhany , Grodno Guberniya , Imperial Russia ( now in Belarus ) . His family was unsure of his exact birth date , but assigned him March 15 , 1889 , the second day of Purim . During his teenage years he became active in the Jewish territorialist movement . Beginning shortly before the 1905 revolution he was a cadre in the Zionist Socialist Workers Party in Białystok , Łódź , Warsaw , Kiev and Odessa . His activities included writing for party journals , organizing unions and Jewish cultural societies and , in Białystok manning an armed guard of the Jewish neighborhood during a pogrom . He served three intermittent periods in the Czarist prisons . Becoming dissatisfied with the ultimate aims of the territorialists he emigrated to America in 1913 . He arrived at Ellis island on December 24 , 1913
pogrom
Białystok pogrom
Melech Epstein