Bracha Habas

Bracha Habas was born in 1900 in Alytus

Bracha Habas was born on 20 January 1900 in Alytus, then in the Russian Empire and today in Lithuania. She was the sixth of 7 children of Nechama Dvora Schlesinger and Israel Habas, a leather trader active in religious Zionism. The family came to the Land of Israel during the Second Aliyah and lived in Petah Tikva, Haifa and Tel Aviv.

She trained as a teacher at the Levinsky Seminary in Neve Tzedek until 1921, and joined Ahdut HaAvoda in 1919. She later studied education and psychology at Leipzig University and took a teaching course in Vienna in 1933.

As an educator she worked with poor children in Jaffa and Tel Aviv and helped found the first school of the working youth in Tel Aviv. With Berl Katznelson she set up the youth center of the Histadrut.

She joined the editorial board of Davar when it was founded in 1925 and wrote reports on settlement, immigration and the Zionist Congresses. In 1931 she helped found Davar LeYeladim, and she was among the first figures of the Am Oved publishing house. She also wrote the first biography of David Ben-Gurion.

In 1946 she married David Hacohen, a politician and diplomat. She died of cancer on 31 July 1968.