Background
Shneur Zalman Rubashov was born to a Hasidic family of the Chabad-Lubavitch denomination in Mir, near Minsk, in the Russian Empire (today in Hrodna Voblast, Belarus), he received a religious education as a youth.
politician writer President of Israel
Shneur Zalman Rubashov was born to a Hasidic family of the Chabad-Lubavitch denomination in Mir, near Minsk, in the Russian Empire (today in Hrodna Voblast, Belarus), he received a religious education as a youth.
He was born to a family that adhered to the Habad stream of the Hasidic movement. He received a traditional Jewish education, but left Orthodoxy to pursue a secular education, studying at the Academy of Jewish Studies in Saint Petersburg and at various universities.
In 1907 he joined the Zionist Socialist Poale Zion movement and began to edit its publications. He was arrested by the tsarist authorities and, for a time, imprisoned for his Zionist activities. Shazar spent World War I in Germany editing the journal Jiidische Rundschau and organizing the Labor Zionist movement there.
Migrating to Palestine in 1924, he became one of the editors of the Labor daily, Davar, and its editor in chief, from 1944 to 1949. Shazar was a member of the executive of the Labor Federation and directed its publishing company, Am Oved. A leader of the Mapai Socialist party, he participated in Zionist congresses on its behalf and fulfilled many speaking and fund-raising missions for the Histadrut and Mapai. He was elected to the executive of the elected assembly of Palestinian Jewry.
Shazar was a member of the Palestinian Jewish delegation to the 1947 United Nations General Assembly which voted the partition of Palestine. Elected to the first, second, and third parliaments as Mapai member, he served for two years as Israel’s minister of education and culture. In 1949, during his tenure, the basic law of compulsory education was adopted. In 1951 he was nominated ambassador of Israel to the Soviet Union, but the Soviet government rejected his nomination for reasons unknown. He headed the information division of the World Zionist Organization and between 1955 and 1960 was chairman of the executive of the Jewish Agency.
In 1963 Shazar was elected president of Israel and won another term five years later. During his presidency he traveled extensively and was official guest of the Canadian, American, Nepalese, Chilean, and other governments. In 1964 he welcomed Pope Paul VI on his one-day visit to Israel. He also sought to strengthen links between Israel and Jewish communities in the Diaspora. Fluent in six languages, at home in Jewish, German, and Russian cultures, Shazar was one of the leading orators of his generation, a noted writer and poet whose literary heritage is carefully studied for the depth of his research, style, and form. He published extensively and made original contributions to the history of the movement that followed Shabbetai Tzevi.
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He married Rachel Shazar and they had 1 son.