Yosef Sprinzak

Yosef Sprinzak (Hebrew יוסף שפרינצק; born December 8, 1885 in Moscow, Russian Empire; † January 28, 1959 ) was a leading Zionist in the first half of the 20th century, an Israeli politician and the first speaker of the Knesset, a position he held from 1949 until his death in 1959.

Life

After the expulsion of the Jews from Moscow in 1891, his family moved to Chisinau, where he founded Zeire Zion ( Zion Youth). He began in 1908 a medical school at the American University of Beirut and left in 1910 during the Second Aliya ( 1904-1914 ) in Palestine down.

Along with Eliezer Kaplan, he headed HaPoel HaZair ( "The Young Worker "), a Zionist- socialist party, founded in 1905, which merged in the party Mapai 1930. Its members were pro-British and trailers Chaim Weizmann. He was one of the founders of the Histadrut in 1920 and led the organization as General Secretary 1945 until 1949.

Sprinzak was elected on 15 July 1948 to the Speaker of the Provisional Parliament, in this role, he laid the foundations of the Israeli parliamentary system. After the general election in 1949 he moved as a member of Mapai in the first Knesset, and was elected as speaker of the new parliament. He pulled at the next two elections again and both times have been confirmed as speakers.

As part of his role as a spokesman he was official acting president during the illness Chaim Weizmann. After Weizmann's death on November 9, 1952 he was official acting president until the official introduction Yitzhak Ben Zvi on 10 December 1952.

His son Yair Sprinzak was also member of the Knesset.