Yehuda Goor

Yehuda Goor was born in 1862 in Minsk Governorate

Yehuda Gur was born Yehuda Leib Grozovski in 1862 in Pohost, in the Minsk Governorate of the Russian Empire. His father, Isaiah Reuben Gurzovsky, came from the Maharshak rabbinical family. He studied in a cheder and a yeshiva at home and for 3 years at the Volozhin Yeshiva.

He moved to Vilna to study literature, joined the local Haskalah circle and learned photography. In 1887 he moved to the Land of Israel with the First Aliyah. He worked in farming and in a shop in Jaffa, then became the first Hebrew teacher in Mazkeret Batya, where he married Rachel Naiman.

In Zikhron Ya'akov in 1891 he and Haim Ziprin began teaching Hebrew in Hebrew. With Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and David Yudilovich he edited Olam Katan, the first Hebrew children's newspaper, in 1892. He later taught in Jaffa and at Mikveh Israel, and in 1898 he was present when Theodor Herzl met Emperor Wilhelm II.

In 1906 he moved to Beirut to work for the Anglo-Palestine Bank. From 1911 to 1929 he managed its Jaffa branch and bought land in Tel Aviv and Haifa for Jewish settlement. During World War I he was exiled to Damascus.

He died on 21 January 1950 and was buried at the Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv. His archive is kept at the National Library of Israel.