Funeral services were held here today for Dr. Chaim Kalvarisky, one-time head of the Department of Arab Affairs of the Jewish Agency, who died yesterday. Dr. Kalvarisky, who was 79 had been active for nearly half a century in the movement for Arab-Jewish rapprochement in Palestine.
In 1939, Dr. Kalvarisky, who was then 72, flew to London to advise the Jewish delegation at the round-table conference on Palestine. A leader of the Labor Zionists, in recent years he was one of the sponsors of the Iohud party, which favors establishment of a bi-national state in Palestine. He was the chief exponent in Palestine of the necessity for friendship and cooperation between Arabs and Jews and was closer to the Arabs than any other Jewish leader.
Born in Pezerosol, Russia, in 1868, he was an active Zionist in pre-Herzl days when he was a student at the University of Montpellier in France. He settled in Palestine in 1895 and for some years taught at the Mikveh Israel agricultural school. At the turn of the century he was appointed by Baron Edmond de Rothschild to supervise the work of Jewish colonies in Galilee which were encountering difficulties. He later became one of the principal directors of the Jewish Colonization Association founded by Baron Rothschild.
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.
