Dr. Pinhas Rosen, Israel’s Justice Minister from 1948-1961 and former head of the Progressive Party and its successor the Independent Liberal Party, died today at Kfar Saba at the age of 91.
Born in Berlin on May 5, 1887 as Pinhas Rosenblueth, he was educated in German universities and practiced law. He was an activist in Zionist student organizations in Germany and was cofounder of the Blue-White Zionist Youth Movement in 1911. In 1920 he became president of the Zionist Federation of Germany and three years later made aliya.
Rosen served on the Zionist Executive Committee in London from 1926-31 and then returned to Palestine where he was in private legal practice from 1932-1948. He headed the Association of Jews from Germany. He was later co-founder of the Aliya Hadasha Party in 1941. He was co-founder and president of first the Progressive Party and then the ILP and was a Member of the Knesset from 1949-68. He then resigned both from the Knesset and the party leadership saying that he should step down for a younger generation.
As Israel’s first Minister of Justice he molded Israel’s legal system, taking it out of politics. In the 1950s he headed a special committee that said that it was not Pinhas Lavon, who as Defense Minister, gave the instructions to a group of Jews working for Israel in Cairo to blow up American and British installations. This finding caused a rift between Premier David Ben Gurion and Rosen and the Justice Minister resigned from the Cabinet while continuing to play an active role in the Knesset. Rosen was the author of numerous articles in Hebrew, English and German in the Israeli and foreign press. A special committee of the ILP, the Cabinet and the Association of German Jews was working out funeral arrangements today.
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.
