In 1885, he was arrested for insurgency and spent 8 months in jail.[1] In Odessa, he met Leon Pinsker, Ahad Ha’am and others, and joined the Hovevei Zion movement. Upon his release from prison, Dizengoff returned to Kishinev and founded the Bessarabian branch of Hovevei Zion, which he represented at the 1887 conference. He left Kishinev in 1888 to study chemical engineering at the Sorbonne in Paris.