August 12, 1944
Berl Katznelson, a leader in the Labor Zionist movement, dies suddenly of a hemorrhage at age 57 in Jerusalem.
Katznelson was born in Belarus in 1887. At a young age he became involved in the Zionist socialist movement and took a job teaching Hebrew literature and Jewish history at a school for poor girls in his town of Bobiruisk.
Desiring to go to the Land of Israel, Katznelson learned a trade and began working as a foundry worker, then made aliyah in 1909. After settling in the Land of Israel, he became disillusioned with the poverty and dependence of Jewish workers and developed an idea of a group of small landholders working in a cooperative fashion. That concept eventually become the moshav movement.
In 1919 he composed a program for working-class unity in the Land of Israel called Ahdut Avodah (Labor Unity), which advocated the creation of a labor-based society in Israel. This program and philosophy eventually formed the basis of the Mapai party, which was founded in 1930. Mapai and its Labor Party successor dominated Israeli politics into the mid-1970s.
Katznelson was one of the founders of the Histadrut labor federation, the Sick Fund and the labor newspaper Davar, for which he served as the editor in chief.
