June 8, 1963
Chaim Boger, a founder of the first Hebrew high school in the Yishuv, the area of Jewish settlement in pre-state Palestine, dies at age 86.
Boger, born with the last name Bograshov in Crimea in 1876, earned a doctorate from the University of Bern and taught at Hebrew schools in Russia. He attended the sixth through 20th Zionist Congresses and was one of the leaders of Zionists for Zion, a movement opposed to the British proposal to create a Jewish homeland in eastern Africa. He made aliyah in 1906.
He helped bring the fledgling Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium, launched in Jaffa in 1905, to the newly founded city of Tel Aviv in mid-1909. The school, originally called HaGymnasia Halvrit (Hebrew High School), is Israel’s first secondary school teaching in Hebrew. Boger teaches at the school from 1919 to 1951, including a period as its principal.
Boger founds a Tel Aviv neighborhood, Nordia, for people left homeless after World War I, and he serves in the municipal government from 1921 to 1930. He is part of the leadership of the Union of General Zionists and represents the party in the second Knesset from 1951 to 1955. He serves on the Knesset’s education and anti-missionary committees.
Tel Aviv’s Bograshov Street and Bograshov Beach, at the foot of the street, are named in honor of Boger.