Jacob Chazan

Jacob Chazan was born in 1899 in Brest

Hazan was born in 1899 in Brest-Litovsk in the Russian Empire, to Haim Yehuda Hazan and Malka Kaminetzki. He studied in a heder, a Hebrew high school and the Warsaw Polytechnic. In 1915 he helped found the Hebrew Scouts movement in Poland, which later became Hashomer Hatzair.

He served in a signal battalion of the Polish army, probably from 1920, and spent much of his service at the front in the Polish-Soviet War. He immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1923, worked in an orchard in Hadera and drained swamps in the Beit She'an valley. In 1926 he joined the kibbutz group that later founded Mishmar HaEmek.

Together with Meir Yaari, he led Hashomer Hatzair, the Kibbutz Artzi movement and Mapam for decades. He co-founded Mapam in 1948 and long supported a pro-Soviet line, but changed his view after the Prague Trials. He sat in the Knesset for Mapam and later the Alignment, and refused to serve as a minister.

He backed the creation of the Alignment in 1968 and, after the Six-Day War, helped move Mapam toward dovish positions. In 1984 he opposed joining the national unity government. He received the Israel Prize in 1989 and died in 1992.