Ya'akov Hazan

Ya'akov Hazan (Hebrew: יעקב חזן‎, 4 June 1899 – 22 July 1992) was an Israeli politician and social activist.

Biography

Hazan was born in 1899 in Brest-Litovsk in the Russian Empire (now Brest, Belarus) to parents Haim Yehuda H. and Malka Kaminetzki. He studied in a Heder and a Hebrew high school. In 1915, he was among the founders of the "Hebrew Scouts movement" in Poland (later to become Hashomer Hatzair), where he was also one of first members of HeHalutz. He studied at Warsaw Polytechnic. He immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1923, working in an orchard in Hadera and in drying swamps in the Beit She'an valley. In 1926, he Joined Kibbutz "Hashomer HaTzair B", which would later establish Mishmar HaEmek.

Hazan became a central figure in the Kibbutz Artzi movement. He actively participated in turning the movement into a kernel of a political party. He served in various positions of the Histadrut and the Zionist movement and major Yishuv institutions. Along with Meir Yaari, he led HaShomer Hatzair, Kibbutz Artzi and Mapam for decades, characterizing those movements by identification with the Soviet Union and Communism.

Jacob

Jacob (later given the name Israel) is regarded as a Patriarch of the Israelites. According to the Book of Genesis, Jacob (/ˈdʒeɪkəb/; Hebrew: יַעֲקֹב Standard Yaʿakov) was the third Hebrew progenitor with whom God made a covenant. He is the son of Isaac and Rebecca, the grandson of Abraham, Sarah and of Bethuel, and the younger twin brother of Esau. Jacob had twelve sons and at least one daughter, by his two wives, Leah and Rachel, and by their handmaidens Bilhah and Zilpah.

Jacob's twelve sons, named in Genesis, were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. His only daughter mentioned in Genesis is Dinah. The twelve sons became the progenitors of the "Tribes of Israel".

As a result of a severe drought in Canaan, Jacob and his sons moved to Egypt at the time when his son Joseph was viceroy. After 17 years in Egypt, Jacob died and Joseph carried Jacob's remains to the land of Canaan, and gave him a stately burial in the same Cave of Machpelah as were buried Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, and Jacob's first wife, Leah.