Although Isaac Jacob Reines was the founder of the Mizrachi religious Zionist movement, he actually didn't coin the phrase itself. He founded an experimental yeshiva in which rabbis were trained to expound the Talmud and preach in Russian. The government closed it four years later. He became the Rabbi in Lida and joined the Zionist movement in 1898. Reines was a strong backer of Herzl, even supporting his Uganda plan. His Mizrachi movement was the first official religious Zionist party.