Burial services were held at Deganya yesterday for Joseph Baratz, one of the founders of that settlement, the first Jewish agricultural collective, who died Saturday at the age of 79. Mr. Baratz was born in Bessarabia and settled in Palestine at the age of 16. He worked as a farmer and was a member of the group that founded Juma, near the south shore of the Sea of Galilee, which became Deganya, known in Israel as “the mother of kibbutzim.” Mr. Baratz held the honorary title of “General” as head of the soldiers’ welfare fund, a project to which he devoted the latter part of his life. He visited the United States several times on behalf of the fund and Histradrut, Israel’s labor federation.
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