Eliyahu Dobkin

Eliyahu Dobkin (Hebrew: אליהו דובקין, 31 December 1898 – 26 October 1976) was a leading figure of the Labor Zionism movement, a signatory of the Israeli Declaration of Independence and a founder of the Israel Museum.

Eliyahu Dobkin was born in Babruysk in the Russian Empire (today in Belarus) to a religious-Zionist family.

His father, Yosef, worked in the lumber and banking industries, and was a member of the Mizrahi movement.

Dobkin was schooled in a heder and gymnasium and later studied in Kharkiv (today in Ukraine), where he founded the Zionist student movement HaHaver in 1914.

[2] On 6 June 1932 Dobkin immigrated to Mandatory Palestine with his wife and daughter and settled in Tel Aviv.

Eliyahu Dobkin (seated right) and his wife speaking with David Ben-Gurion (second from left) at Lod Airport before their flight to New York, May 1947.