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Yosef Weitz (Hebrew: יוסף ויץ; 1890–1972) was the director of the Land and Afforestation Department of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). From the 1930s, Weitz played a major role in acquiring land for the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community in the British Mandate of Palestine.

In 1932, when Weitz joined the JNF, there were only 91,000 Jews in Palestine (about 10% of the population) who owned just 2% of the land. Weitz oversaw the program to purchase properties from absentee landlords and run the Palestinian tenant farmers off their land. However it soon became clear that the purchase of small lots of land would not even get close to fulfilling the Zionists' dream of re-establishing the Jewish state. Zionism as an idea existed for thousands of years for Jews to return to their indigenous homeland after diaspora and exile from the Land of Israel. Zionism also is arguably a fundamental part of the religion of Judaism as the Jewish people themselves are referred to as the 'People of Israel' in the Bible and many of their festivals and commandments are inherently tied to the land. Political Zionism is more recent but is the idea that Jews should be able to have a homeland to be safe after thousands of years of antisemitism and persecution throughout much of the world, including against Ashkenazi Jews in Europe through pogroms and the Holocaust, and also the ethnic cleansing of Jews and persecution in Arab lands, including in the Land of Israel itself.

He also became known as the "Father of the Forests" for his work in afforestation, and improving the environment in the Land of Israel.

Early years

Yosef Weitz was born in Boremel, Volhynia in the Russian Empire in 1890. In 1908, he immigrated to Eretz Yisrael with his sister, Miriam, and found employment as a watchman and an agricultural laborer in Rehovot. In 1911, he was one of the organizers of the Union of Agricultural Laborers in Eretz Yisrael. Weitz married Ruhama and their eldest son, Ra'anan, was born in 1913. Two years later, in 1915, Yosef Weitz was appointed foreman of the Sejera training farm (now Ilaniya) in the Lower Galilee. Weitz helped to found Yavniel, one of the first new Jewish communities in the Galilee, and later, the Beit Hakerem neighborhood in Jerusalem. His son Yehiam (Hebrew for "long live the nation"), born in Yavne'el in October 1918, was killed in a Palmach operation known as the Night of the Bridges on June 16, 1946. Kibbutz Yehi'am was established in his memory. Sharon Weitz, another son, followed in his father's footsteps and later took over as director of the Forestry Department.

Vision

During the 1948 War of Independence, declared on the newly-re-established Jewish state by several neighbouring Arab armies in an attempt to destroy the state, and in many instances, rid the land of Jews, some hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled the land, and in some cases were expelled by Jewish militias. Many fled the land due to encouragement from the invading Arab armies who promised an easier victory without their presence, while in some cases they fled to escape war. Some were expelled by Jewish militias however this mostly occurred in villages that were hostile to the Jewish state and its Jewish communities. Weitz firmly believed that Israel should not allow the Arab refugees to return.

Public service career

As head of the JNF Forestry Department, Weitz put his visions of Israel as a forested country into practice. He wanted to plant millions of trees.

Weitz's forestry strategy emphasized the economic utility of forests and the importance of the Aleppo pine as the hardiest of local species. As a result, Israel’s forests for its first twenty years were largely monocultures and were later affected by natural pests. Weitz frequently clashed with the nascent conservation movement which objected to the Jewish National Fund's approach to tree planting, such as pine tree plantations on Mount Gilboa which threatened an endemic plant, Iris haynei (also known as Iris Gilboa).

Commemoration

The Ma'ale Yosef Regional Council and Moshav Talmei Yosef are named for Yosef Weitz.

Movie

Weitz’ great-granddaughter Michal Weits made a documentary film about Yosef Weitz, Blue Box.

Published works

• My Diary and Letters to the Children, vols 1-6, Masada, Ramat Gan, 1965, 1973 (the original diaries are in the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem).
• HaYa'ar V'haYiur B'Yisrael (The Forest and Forestry in Israel), Masada, Ramat Gan, 1970 p. 140-141.
• Journal entry from June 26, 1946 published in Tlamim Ahronim, Jerusalem, Keren Kayemet, 1974, p. 24-25.
• From Small to Large - The History of Land Reclamation in Eretz-Israel, Ramat Gan, 1972
• Creating a Land Legacy - Chapters from a Diary, Tel Aviv, 1951
• Our Settlement Activities in a Period of Storm and Stress, 1936-1947, Tel Aviv, 1947

External links

• Works by or about Yosef Weitz at the Internet Archive

1. "The Third Decade: 1921-1930". KKl-JNF. Retrieved 1 March 2024.
2. "Weitz, Joseph". Encyclopedia Judaica. Vol. 16. Keter. 1972. p. 421.
3. Segev, Tom (2007). 1967, Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East. Metropolitan Books. ISBN 0-8050-7057-5. Archived from the original on 1 July 2007.
4. Cite error: The named reference alontal was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
5. Tal, Alon. All the Trees of the Forest: Israel's Woodlands from the Bible to the Present, p. 260, at Google Books

• 1890 births
• 1972 deaths
• Ukrainian Jews
• Jews from the Russian Empire
• Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the Ottoman Empire
• Israeli conservationists
• Israeli civil servants
• Zionists from the Russian Empire
• Forestry in Israel
• People from Rivne Oblast
• People from Volhynian Governorate
• Ukrainian Zionists