Shazar (Rubashov), Shneur Zalman

(b. 1899)

   Third president of Israel. Rubashov (later, Shazar, from the Hebrew initials of his name) was born in Russia. He helped organize Jewish self-defence groups during the 1905 revolution and became active in the Marxist-Zionist Poale Zion group, assisting the movement’s chief ideologist, BOROCHOV, to edit a paper. After two earlier visits, Shazar settled in Palestine in 1924 and became active as a journalist and politician, associated with the Histadrut (labour union, of which he was secretary) and the Mapai Party. He was a member of the Jewish Agency delegation to the United Nations General Assembly meeting of November 1947, at the time the international organization voted for a Jewish state in part of Palestine. When Israel came into existence Shazar was elected to the Knesset and served as minister of education from 1949–51. In 1963 he was elected president of the state, and was re-elected for five more years in 1968.

   Shazar was unusual among yishuv leaders of his generation in having had a thorough formal education before settling in Palestine. He wrote poetry and many scholarly articles, besides an enormous amount of journalism, and maintained a lifelong interest in Chabad Chassidism, after whose founder he was named (see Shneur, Zalman of Lyady).