Shimon Kushnir

Shimon Kushnir (15 December 1895 – February 1986 )

Shimon Kushnir was a writer and Zionist. He was one of the founders of the Kfar Yehezkel workers’ moshav, a member of the Histadrut, director of the agricultural department of the Association for Made in Israel, a member of the Third Assembly and a member of the Givatayim local council.

Shimon Kushner was born in Balta in Odessa in the Russian Empire. His father immigrated to Israel alone in the summer of 1904. He was joined by his wife and six children in December of that year. After a difficult period of Judea, during which were forced to sell most of their belongings to survive, the family left and settled in Petah Tikva where his brothers Shimon and Reuven were sent to study Talmud Torah where their older brother Mordechai had already studied. They later moved to a secular school. He later studied at the Kiryat Sefer Agricultural School in Ben Shemen under the direction of Israel Belkind, one of the founders of the Bilu movement.

Kushnir was a volunteer of the Hebrew Battalion. He was one of the founders of the Ahdut HaAvodah movement in Petah Tikva and one of the founders of the Histadrut Workers in Eretz Israel. He also participated as an elected delegate at its founding conference in 1920. In 1920 he married Esther, daughter of Yekutiel Kaplan. They had two children.

In 1921 he went to Kfar Yehezkel in the Jezreel Valley. In 1925 he was sent to the National Fund for Lithuania. He was In 1932 he went on a Histadrut mission to the United States and in 1949 to South America. In 1933 he was elected to the 18th Zionist Congress in Prague, in 1935 to the 10th Congress in Lucerne and in 1937 to the 20th Congress in Zurich. He was active in the Haganah and was one of the leaders Kfar Saba. He was sent to prison by the British Mandatory government. In 1936 he was appointed director of the agricultural department of the Association for the Production of the Country. He was appointed during the War of Independence as the planner of the supervision and supply system. In

In 1938 he remarried, to Leah Komrov, and was the father of two more children. In 1939 he left his farm in the village of Yehezkel and settled in the Borochov neighborhood and was elected as a member of the Givatayim local council.

Kushnir was a prolific writer and wrote extensively about his contemporaries, such as Avraham Herzfeld , Noah Naftolsky , Shmuel Yavneeli , Aharon Sher and others. He died in 1986, at the age of 90.