Shmuel Yavnieli

Born Shmuel Varshavsky in Kazanka, Russian Empire (today in Ukraine), Shmuel Yavnieli was an ardent socialist Zionist who immigrated to Palestine in 1905. After writing an article for the Ha-Po‘el ha-tsa‘ir journal about promoting Zionism among the Jewish communities of Yemen, Yavnieli traveled to Aden in 1911. Disguised as an attaché of the Orthodox religious leader Abraham Isaac Kook, Yavnieli visited Jewish communities there and propounded Zionist ideas of Jewish resettlement in Palestine, Jewish labor, and “redemption” of the land. Yavnieli and the Zionist labor groups sponsoring him arranged for subsidized passage to Palestine, and nearly 1,400 Yemeni Jews made the journey. After about a year, the Palestine Office of the Zionist Organization canceled Yavnieli’s project. He returned to Palestine, where he served in one of the Jewish battalions of the British army in the last months of World War I. Following the war, Yavnieli helped to found the Histadrut in 1920. He eventually served in the israeli Ministry of Education.