Funeral services were held here today for Prof. Benzion Dinur, a former Minister of Education and one of Israel’s foremost historians, who died yesterday at the, age of 89.
Prof. Dinur, whose name originally was Dina-burg, was born in Russia and came to Palestine in 1921. He was active in the Labor Zionist Movement and in 1936 joined the faculty of the Hebrew University on which he remained for the rest of his life. At the time of his death he was professor emeritus of Jewish history. He also served as president of the Yad Vashem and was chairman of the World Hebrew Union.
Prof. Dinur was Minister of Education in 1954-55. He was considered one of the greatest interpreters of Jewish history and through his researches is credited with proving that since the destruction of the Second Temple there was never a period without a Jewish community in Palestine. He also stated, in a series of essays, that the modern Palestinians came to the country only in the second half of the 19th century as refugees from persecution in Egypt and that their coming coincided with the first Jewish immigration from Europe.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
