July 24, 2013 Haredi Rabbis Yitzhak Yosef and David Lau are elected to 10-year terms as Israel’s chief rabbis — Yosef for the Sephardim and Lau for the Ashkenazim. Each wins 68 of the 147…
April 30, 2012 Benzion Netanyahu, the father of Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, dies at home in Jerusalem at age 102. He was born Benzion Mileikowsky in Warsaw on March 25, 1910. His father…
November 10, 2004 More than half a century after the founding of the state of Israel, the Knesset officially adopts “Hatikvah” (“The Hope”) as the national anthem. The song became the anthem of the Zionist…
Simcha Dinitz, a longtime Israeli diplomat who served as Israel’s Ambassador to the United States from 1973-1978, passes away at the age of 74.
The first of eleven Basic Laws is issued by the Israeli parliament. Basic Laws are originally intended to form the basis of an Israeli Constitution, but the constitution remains unwritten.
The Knesset passes the Bank of Israel Law by a vote of fifty-five to zero with fourteen abstentions. The new law, which goes into effect on December 1, 1954, establishes the Bank of Israel as the central financial authority for the country.
Created in 1920 to serve as a neutral, independent trade union representing all Jewish workers in Palestine, the Histadrut had grown to 503,000 members by 1953, representing approximately 75% of the country’s workers.
After more than a year of continued debate on the issue, the First Knesset adopts the “Harari Resolution,” which stipulated that the “constitution” of Israel would be composed of a series of Basic Laws approved by the Knesset.
The Compulsory Education bill, which had been passed on September 12th, enters into law. It mandates that all children between the ages of 5 and 15 attend a state-recognized educational institution.
In a cable to the State Department, US Chargé d’affaires Julius Holmes recounts British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin’s concerns that “within five years, Israel may be a Communist state.”
The iconic flag with two blue stripes and a blue Star of David at its center becomes the official Israeli flag more than five months after the establishment of the state.
On Friday afternoon in the Tel Aviv Museum, David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Provisional State Council, declares Israel’s independence. The United States is the first country to recognize the new and already besieged state of Israel.
Ben-Gurion feared that there were too many decision-making centers in the Yishuv and that urgency and immediacy demanded one single voice.
Berl Katznelson, a leader in the Labor Zionist movement, dies suddenly at the age of 57 in Jerusalem. His advocacy for the creation of a labor-based society in Israel would eventually form the basis of the Mapai party, which was created in 1930 and would dominate Israeli politics until the late 1970′s.
Jacob Toledano returns to the Land of Israel in early 1942 to take up his new post as Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Tel-Aviv and Jaffa.
David Ben-Gurion of Ahdut Ha’avodah and Joseph Sprinzak of Hapoel Hatzair recognize that their parties have more in common with each other than they have differences and begin moving towards a merger. The Mapai party is the result.
Yehuda Amital, the founder of Yeshivat Har Etzion, is born as Yehuda Klein in Oradea, Romania, where he receives a religious education.
Arthur Ruppin, head of the Palestine Office of the World Zionist Organization, purchases the estate of Sir John Gray Hill on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem for the purpose of building a university.
June 4, 1899 Ya’akov Hazan, a leader in socialist politics through Israel’s first four decades, is born in Brest Litovsk, Russia. He is a founder of the Hashomer Hatzair scouting movement in Poland in 1915…
December 31, 1898 Eliyahu Dobkin, a signer of the Israeli Declaration of Independence and the founder of the Israel Museum, is born in Bobruysk, Belarus. Dobkin is raised in a religious Zionist family. His father,…
Yosef Sprinzak, who would serve as the first Speaker of the Knesset and twice as Interim President, is born in Moscow.
