11:49:56


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Bidding Information
Lot #    20567
Auction End Date    5/6/2008 10:27:00 AM (mm/dd/yyyy)
          
Title Information
Title (English)    Mispad Mar
Title (Hebrew)    מספד מר
Author    [Polemic - Only Ed.]
City    [Jerusalem ]
Publication Date    [1959]?
          
Collection Information
Independent Item    This listing is an independent item not part of any collection
          
Description Information
Physical
Description		    Only edition. [4] pp. 237:155 mm., usual age staining. Not in CD-EPI.
          
Paragraph 1    A most vitriolic polemic against Joseph Sprinzak specifically and the Knesset in general, as it refers to Sprinzak as the Yoshev Rosh of Beit HaMinim--the chairperson of a house of infidels.

It seems that after Joseph Sprinzak, who served as speaker of the Knesset, died on January 28, 1959 there was an official eulogy given at a memorial in the Knesset on February 5th by Beba Idelson. The representatives of the Aguda reprinted this eulogy with caustic comments throughout, such as a quote from the Shulhan Arukh that it is forbidden to mourn for a "Rasha", an evil person who has shaken off the yoke of mitzvot. It also mocks the fact that the eulogy quotes from Tanakh, and lists an array of quotes which were used in the eulogy and opposes them with quotes which contradict their meaning.
          
Detailed
Description		    Born in Moscow, Sprinzak's father was active in the Hovevei Zion. When Jews were expelled from Moscow in 1891, the family moved to Kishinev and then Warsaw. The home was a center for young Hebrew writers and Zionists. In the early 1900s, he was one of the organizers of HaTehiyah, a Zionist group led by Yitzhak Gruenbaum. During this period he worked in a Hebrew publishing house as well as on Hebrew and Yiddish newspapers in Warsaw. In 1905 he returned to Kishinev where he was active in Zionist affairs. In 1908 he spent several months in Constantinople where he was in contact with Zionist leaders, and then went to Beirut to study medicine. His studies were cut very short when, after just a few months, he was asked to become secretary of HaPoel HaZair. During World War I he was in Eretz Yisrael and after the war, was instrumental in founding Hitahdut, a world movement which joined HaPoel HaZair and Zeirei Zion. A delegate to the 11th and 12th Zionist Congresses, Sprinzak became the first representative of the yishuv's labor movement to be elected to the Zionist Executive. When independence was declared in 1948, he was elected to the Provisional State Council as well as the first three Knessets, serving as speaker for 10 years. Joseph Sprinzak was known as a Zionist leader who strongly identified with the rank-and-file, both in Israel and abroad. His conception of Zionism was based on socialism and the process of national rebirth. During his tenure as secretary of HaPoel HaZair, he was involved in the absorption of Jews from Yemen. During World War I, he helped organize the yishuv's Jewish workers. In the 1920s, as a member of the Zionist executive, he was head of the Labor and then the Aliyah Departments. He also helped found the Histadrut labor federation and was a member of the Tel Aviv municipality. In the 1930s, as a member of the Histadrut executive, Sprinzak was instrumental in the formation of Ben-Gurion's Mapai political party. In the 1940s he became a leading member of the Zionist General Council and eventually was general secretary of the Histadrut. As Knesset speaker during the body's first 10 years, Sprinzak had a major influence on the country's emerging democracy. He died in 1959.

Beba Idelson (nee Trachtenberg; 1895–1975), Israel labor leader. Born in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, she settled in Palestine in 1926, and from 1930 was the general secretary of the Mo'ezet ha-Po'alot. She was elected to all the central bodies of the Histadrut and of Mapai from 1930. From 1949 she was a member of the Knesset and from 1955 to 1961, deputy speaker. She traveled widely on missions on behalf of Mo'ezet ha-Po'alot and published numerous articles on women's labor problems, mainly in the periodical Devar ha-Po'elet. Her first husband was Israel Bar-Yehudah (Idelsohn); she subsequently married Hayyim Halpeirn (1895–1973), Israel economist, professor of agricultural economics, and head of the Israel Bank of Agriculture.

          
Reference
Description		    http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/sprinzak.html, EJ
        
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Listing Classification
Period
20th Century:    Checked
  
Location
Israel:    Checked
  
Subject
Polemics:    Checked
  
Characteristic
First Editions:    Checked
Language:    Hebrew
  
Manuscript Type
  
Kind of Judaica