Ḥayim Zuta

Raised in Yekaterinoslav in the Russian Empire (today Dnipro, Ukraine), Ḥayim Arieh Zuta studied in Gomel (today in Belarus) and Berlin before becoming a pioneer of the heder metukan (reformed heder) in Eastern Europe. He immigrated to Palestine in 1903, and taught at a modern Jewish girls’ school in Jaffa. At a conference of Hebrew educators in Palestine in 1906, Zuta proposed that Hebrew schools throughout the region adopt a custom of planting trees on Tu bi-Shevat. The conference accepted Zuta’s proposal, the first large tree-planting occurred the following year, and in later years this would become a major Zionist annual event. Zuta moved to Jerusalem in 1913 to serve as a schoolmaster of that city’s first Hebrew-language modern school. A prolific writer and cultural activist, he published history readers, Bible readers, and science textbooks for the Zionist educational system in Mandatory Palestine.