known, aimed to build a secure foundation for the continuity of their socioeconomic life and culture (including the Yiddish language). For them, compact, mass colonization was the only effective means to avoid the pressures of assimilation and dispersion associated with individual immigration—regardless of its scale.

Not wanting to displace the large Arab population in Palestine and foreseeing long-term conflicts in that region, the leaders of the Frayland-lige searched for alternate locations. Differing with Zionism also on the necessity of national sovereignty, the territorialists were willing to accept a parallel and separate coexistence with citizens of a friendly nation, thus avoiding the potentially inflammatory role of competitors or usurpers. Prominent among the founders and leaders of the organization were Yitskhok Nakhmen Steinberg (or Shteynberg; 1888–1957), Ben-Adir (1878–1942), and Yoysef Tshernikhov(1882–1941).

The Frayland-lige represents the second phase of the territorialist movement, the first phase of which began in 1905 with the establishment of the Jewish Territorial Organization (ITO) in London led by Israel Zangwill (1864–1926). Together with the two parties linked to territorialism, the YS (Jewish Socialist Labor Party; SERP) and the SS (Zionist Socialist Labor Party; SSRP)—later united as the Fareynikte (United Jewish Socialist Labor Party)—the ITO promoted the procurement of an autonomous territory for those Jews who could not, or would not, remain in the lands in which they currently lived. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, along with massive emigration of individual European Jews, drained the momentum of the ITO. By 1925 it had disbanded.

Phase two of the territorialist movement had its beginnings in 1933 in Paris