Beba Idelson

Beba Idelson was born in 1895 in Dnipro

Beba Idelson, born Trakhtenberg, was born in 1895 in Ekaterinoslav in the Russian Empire. Her mother died when she was 8, and her father Yitzhak died when she was 14. She helped support the family with her grandmother and brother.

She finished high school in 1912 and studied economics at Kharkiv University. She joined the Youth of Zion movement in 1915 and the Zionist Socialist Party in 1917. That year she married Yisrael Idelson, later Bar-Yehuda, and they had a daughter.

The couple was exiled for their Zionist activity and deported from the country in 1924. After working with Zionist groups in Europe, they immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1926 and lived in Petah Tikva. She later divorced and married Haim Halperin.

In 1931 she became secretary of the Council of Working Women, where she was active until 1974. During World War II she helped lead the volunteering of Jewish women from the Yishuv to the British army. In 1948 she sat on the Provisional State Council and headed the committee that chose the Emblem of Israel.

She served in the Knesset for Mapai from 1949 to 1965 and was the first woman on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. She worked for women's equality, opposed religious coercion and backed drafting women into the IDF. From 1968 to 1975 she chaired the World Movement of Pioneer Women, and she died in 1975.