Burial services were held on the Mount of Olives yesterday for Zalman Aranne, a veteran Labor Party leader and Knesset member who served in Israel’s Cabinet for 11 years as Minister of Education and Culture. Mr. Aranne died at Hadassah hospital Sunday at the age of 71 after a brief illness. President Zalman Shazar. Premier Golda Meir, Cabinet ministers and members of the Knesset joined 2000 mourners who accompanied the bier to the gravesite. Mrs. Meir delivered a eulogy of her late colleague at Sunday’s Cabinet meeting. Mr. Aranne’s death diminishes the rapidly shrinking group of the Labor Party’s old guard associated with pioneering in the pre-Statehood era. He was born in Russia and served his Zionist apprenticeship as a member of the Jewish self-defense committee in his hometown of Yuzovka and on the board of the Jewish War Refugee Committee after the first World War. He settled in Palestine in 1926 and like many of his generation worked at road-building and draining swamps before he entered politics as a member of Mapai. Mr. Aranne was elected to every Knesset from the first to the sixth. He was Minister of Education and Culture from 1955-60 and 1963-69. He resigned from public life at the end of last year. Mr. Aranne was associated with major reforms of Israel’s elementary and high school system and with the inculcation of “Jewish consciousness” into the curriculum.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
