Funeral services will be held tomorrow for Kadish Luz, a former Cabinet Minister and former Speaker of the Knesset who died at Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba last night at the age of 77. His body lay in state in the Knesset this evening where a special memorial service was held, it was removed later to Degania Bet, the kibbutz in Galilee that was Luz’s home for over 50 years, where burial will take place. The Knesset adjourned early yesterday in a gesture of mourning.
Mr. Luz, a veteran of the Labor Party and a leader of its Mapai faction, was appointed Minister of Agriculture in 1955 and was unanimously elected Speaker of the Knesset in 1959, a post he held until 1969 when he retired from active politics. Born in Brobruisk, Russia in 1895, Mr. Luz attended schools in Odessa and Germany and served in the Russian Army during World War I, earning officer’s rank at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution.
In 1917, be participated in the congress of the Union of Jewish Officers in Petrograd. He was a co-founder of the kibbutz movement in Brobruisk, and went to Palestine in 1920 in the Third Aliya, and worked as a farmer and laborer. In 1921, he joined Kibbutz Degania, the earliest kibbutz. Mr. Luz was elected a member of the Mapai Central Committee in 1935 and held various senior posts in the party, the kibbutz movement and Histadrut. He was elected to the second Knesset in 1951.
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