Zalman Aran

Zalman Aran
File:Zalman Aranne.jpg
Date of birth	1 March 1899
Place of birth	Yuzovka, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire
Year of aliyah	1926
Date of death
Knessets	1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Faction represented in Knesset
1949–1965	Mapai
1965–1968	Alignment
1968–1969	Labor Party
1969	Alignment
Ministerial roles
1954–1955	Minister without Portfolio
1955	Minister of Transportation
1955–1960	Minister of Education
1963–1969	Minister of Education

Zalman Aran (Hebrew: זלמן ארן‎, 1 March 1899 – 6 September 1970) was a Zionist activist, educator and Israeli politician.

Biography

Aran was born Zalman Aharonowitz in 1899 in Yuzovka in the Yekaterinoslav Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Donetsk, Ukraine), and received a religious education in a heder. He later studied agriculture in Kharkov. In his youth, he was active in Tze'irei Zion, and in 1917 became a member of the "Self-Defense Organization Committee" of the movement. He worked as a teacher and a statistician from 1918 to 1923. In 1920, after the party split, he joined the Zionist Socialists and was a member of its secret Central Committee from 1924 to 1925.

In 1926, he immigrated to Mandate Palestine, where he joined the Ahdut HaAvoda Party. He worked in building and road construction. In 1930, after Ahdut HaAvoda merged into Mapai, he was appointed the new party's General Secretary in Tel Aviv. From 1936 to 1947 he worked in the Histadrut Executive Committee as Treasurer and Director of the Information Department, and was one of the founders of the School for Histadrut Activists. He also became a member of the Zionist Executive Committee in 1946 and a member of its Presidium in 1948.

In 1949 he was elected to the Knesset, and was re-elected in 1951, 1955, 1959, 1961 and 1965. He chaired of Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and was also a member of the House Committee. In 1953 he was appointed Minister without Portfolio and, in 1954, Minister of Transportation. From 1955 to 1960 and again from 1963 to 1969, he was Minister of Education and Culture.

As Israel's Minister of Education, he introduced "Jewish Identity" and Jewish tradition into the curriculum and promoted the expansion of technical education. In 1955, the Knesset accepted his reform program for the Israeli education system and his demands for a secondary education diploma, as well as extension of Israel's compulsory education Law to the ages of 14 to 16. He also promoted the integration of children from different backgrounds into the same schools to accelerate Israel's melting-pot ideal and cut down socio-economic gaps in the Israeli society, including recreational activities for development town residents.

As a government minister in 1967, he initially supported the majority position which sought a diplomatic solution to Egypt's closure of the Straits of Tiran, rather than a pre-emptive strike, which he also felt posed a great risk to the home front and the Israeli Air Force. He also opposed the occupation of East Jerusalem.

He died in 1970. The Tel Aviv University School of History and the central library of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev were named after him, as were several schools in Israel.

Bibliography

• Trials of Education and implementation (1971) (Hebrew)
• Autobiography (1971) (Hebrew)
• Front and the appearance (1972) (Hebrew)

External links

• Zalman Aran on the Knesset website