Sarah Kafrit

Sarah Kafrit was born in 1900 in Minsk

Sarah Kafrit was born in 1900 in Minsk, in the Russian Empire, to Fruma and Meir Kaplan. Her brother was Eliezer Kaplan, later Israel's first finance minister. As a young woman she joined Zionist groups in Minsk and set up an educational home for neglected Jewish children.

She immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1920 and studied at the Levinsky kindergarten seminary in Tel Aviv. She opened a kindergarten at Mikveh Israel and in 1922 became the first kindergarten teacher of Nahalal. There she married Michael Kafri.

In 1927 the couple helped found moshav Kfar Yehoshua in the Jezreel Valley, where she lived until her death. She was secretary of the Moshavim Movement and active in the Women Workers' Council, working for equal status of women on the moshav. She went abroad as an emissary to the United States and South Africa.

She was a Mapai delegate to the Assembly of Representatives and to Zionist Congresses. She entered the Knesset in 1951, was reelected in 1955, and lost her seat in 1959. She died in 1983.