Charizman observed that Baruch Meir:
... appreciated the deed [in the sense of action] as the foundation for life [and therefore] was not content with Torah and prayer alone.
Such deeds were:
helping the sick, the poor, the unhappy, etc.
He made it a regular custom to go around the prayer houses to collect money for these deeds of charity usually anonymous. He was therefore nicknamed Baruch Meir the handful.
Charizman:
He was one of the 10 first people in Mezritch drawn to the idea of Khibat Zion... and who founded Yisud Ha’Ma’la to buy land in the land of Israel, to turn the Jews who are detached from the ground, into farmers living healthy and Kosher life... With his enthusiasm and eloquence of speech he drew to him many Jews.
Rabbi Baruch Meir wrote in his diary about his being drawn to the idea of Khibat Zion and to Herzl’s active Zionism.
I was stirred by the ideas of Khibat Zion and the national spirit. This movement resulted in 27 colonies in the land of Israel, and this is what drove me to Eretz Israel.
He writes of the leader, “a man of action – Binyamin Matityahu Herzl.”
Taking Herzl's full name, Binyamin Ze’ev, Theodor Herzl, Baruch Meir translates the Greek name Theodor -- that combines Theo [=God] and Dor [=present] -- and renders it in Hebrew: Mattat-Yah =gift of God and calls him Matityahu. This is his personal interpretation of Herzl’s name as a religious Zionist.
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...drawn to Khibat Zion and active Zionism...
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Mr. Sludski was secretary of a Zionist convention in Miezritch. He told Charizman:
during the hours that R’ Baruch Meir spent with me, he would tell me all that he went through in the Land of Israel, and lo and behold: his mouth poured out his complaints while his face was lit up from some inner joy, the source of which I could not fathom.
Charizman quotes Sludski:
when Herzl arrived with the idea of the Jewish State and awoke political Zionism - R’ Baruch Meir was as if born for the task… not with a superficial secular approach but in holiness and purity, as if walking on tip toe like a Cohen entering the holiest of all places
Sludski recalled that Baruch Meir once stated quietly:
If I knew that I could rescue my people from the mire of Galut [exile] and bring them to the Land of Israel, I would have sacrificed my life for it.
