Akiva Aryeh Weiss

Weiss, a jeweler and watchmaker, was born to a Jewish family in Grodna (in present day Belarus) in 1868, but raised in Łódz, Poland.

[3] Arthur Ruppin's memoirs recount that Weiss demanded the creation of "a Hebrew urban centre in a healthy environment, planned according to the rules of aesthetics and modern hygiene.

"[4] Weiss would later on tell Ruppin; “Outside Jaffa, on the road to Petach Tikva...we intend to found a modern Jewish urban district.

We already have our eye on a particular tract of land.”[4] Currently scholarship also suggests that he likely presided over the 1909 real estate lottery (and is the leading figure in Abraham Soskin's famous photograph of the event) in which 66 Jewish families drew numbers written on seashells to determine the allocation of lots in the about-to-be established city of Tel Aviv.

The book featured an introduction by Moshe Sharett, the 2nd Prime Minister of Israel and a man of considerable stature at the time.