Avraham Granot

Avraham Granot (Hebrew: אברהם גרנות‎, born Abraham Granovsky; 18 June 1890 – 5 July 1962) was a Zionist activist, Israeli politician and a signatory of the Israeli declaration of independence.

Avraham Granot
Date of birth	18 June 1890
Place of birth	Făleşti, Russian Empire
Year of aliyah	1924
Date of death	5 July 1962(1962-07-05) (aged 72)
Knessets	1, 2
Faction represented in Knesset
1949–1951	Progressive Party

Biography

Granot was born in Făleşti, in the Beletsky Uyezd of the Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire (today Moldova). He attended Gymnasia Herzliya in Tel Aviv. In 1911, he traveled to Switzerland to study law and political economy at the University of Fribourg and University of Lausanne, graduating with a PhD in 1917.

Political career

In 1919 he began working for the Jewish National Fund in The Hague, and was relocated to Jerusalem in 1922. Two years later he officially immigrated to Mandatory Palestine. He also lectured at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on agrarian policy. In 1940 he was appointed director-general of the JNF.

Avraham Granot 1945

Granot was a member of the New Aliyah Party and one of the signers of the Israeli declaration of independence in 1948. In 1949, he was elected to the first Knesset as a member of the Progressive Party (the successor of the New Aliyah Party). He was re-elected in 1951, but resigned from the Knesset six weeks after the election. He was head of several public corporations, and sat on the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Weizmann Institute of Science.[1]

In 1960, Granot was elected chairman of the JNF Board of Directors.

Commemoration

Neve Granot, a neighborhood in Jerusalem near the Israel Museum is named for him. The main street is Avraham Granot Street.[2]

Books in English

• Land Problems in Palestine (1926)
• Land Taxation in Palestine (1927)
• Land and the Jewish Reconstruction in Palestine (1931)
• The Fiscal System in Palestine (1952)
• Agrarian Reform and the Record of Israel (1956)

References

1. Encyclopedia of Zionism and Israel, edited by Raphael Patai, Herzl Press/McGraw-Hill, New York, 1971, pp.409-410
2. Information on street names in Jerusalem Archived 2008-12-24 at the Wayback Machine Jerusalem Municipal Council website (in Hebrew)

External links

• Avraham Granot on the Knesset website
• The personal papers of Avraham Granot are kept at the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem. The notation of the record group is A202.