Shlomo Lavi

Shlomo Lavi
Date of birth	1882
Place of birth	Płońsk, Russian Empire
Year of aliyah	1905
Date of death	23 July 1963
Knessets	1, 2
Faction represented in Knesset
1949–1955	Mapai

Shlomo Lavi (Hebrew: שלמה לביא‎‎, born Shlomo Levkovich in 1882, died 23 July 1963) was a Zionist activist and politician.

Born in Plonsk in the Russian Empire (today in Poland), Lavi received a religious education. While growing up in Plonsk, Shlomo Lavi and David Green (the future founding father of Israel, David Ben-Gurion) were both members of the Ezra youth movement and together taught Bible lessons and Hebrew to poor and orphaned children.

In 1905 he made aliyah to Ottoman Palestine as part of the second Zionist wave of immigration. In the same year he attended the founding convention of Hapoel Hatzair.

Lavi worked as an agricultural laborer in Petach-Tikva, in an olive oil factory in Haifa, then at the recommendation of Arthur Ruppin as farm manager in Hulda, and together with David Ben-Gurion at Sejera.

Lavi was involved in the establishment of the Jewish defence organisation Hashomer (1909-1920), which he joined as a watchman in the Galilee, in Hedera and Rehovot.

Later on he joined the founders of Kvutzat Kinneret, where he worked at reclaiming marshlands.

Lavi was throughout his life a dedicated member of the Zionist Labour movement and one of its ideologists.Berl Katznelson, one of the founders of Labour Zionism in pre-state Israel, described Lavi as one the "First Ten" founders of the movement. He became one of the leaders and ideologists of Ahdut HaAvoda, and later co-founded Mapai.

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