KRAUSE, ELIYAHU

KRAUSE, ELIYAHU (1876–1962), agronomist and pioneer in Ereẓ Israel. Born in Berdyansk, Russia, Krause in 1892 went to the mikveh israel Agricultural School in Ereẓ Israel. After further study at the Ecole Supérieure Agricole in France, he was employed by the jewish colonization association (ICA) and founded the Or Yehudah Agricultural School in Smyrna, Turkey. When ICA took over the management of the Jewish settlements in Ereẓ Israel from Baron Edmond de rothschild , it founded the Sejera farm in Galilee for the training of settlers, and Krause was appointed farm manager (1901). At Sejera he met members of the Second Aliyah for the first time. His brother-in-law, yehoshua hankin , persuaded him to accept Mania Wilbushewitch-Shochat's proposal to hand over the farming of the land in Sejera for a year to a group of workers on their collective responsibility. This was the first step of collective agricultural labor in Ereẓ Israel. Early in 1914 he was appointed director of the Mikveh Israel Agricultural School. Many of these workers, in addition to the students, received agricultural training at Mikveh Israel and some of them went on to found moshavim and kibbutzim. In World War I Krause carefully protected the interests of his school. Subsequently he introduced Hebrew (instead of French) as the language of instruction and introduced Jewish labor and watch duty throughout the farm. From the 1930s Mikveh Israel was a center for training Youth Aliyah wards. His daughter, Judith (1907–1936), archaeologist, was born at Sejera. She took part in Garstang's excavations at Jericho and from 1933 to 1935 directed the excavations at et-Tell (ai ). Her description, Les Fouilles de Ay, 1933–1935, was published posthumously in 1949. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mikveh Israel, Ish ha-Adamah (1939); R. Yanait-Ben Zvi, Eliyahu Krause (Heb., 1963). (Israel Klausner) KRAUSKOPF, JOSEPH KRAUSKOPF, JOSEPH (1858–1923), U.S. Reform rabbi. Krauskopf was born in Ostrowo, Prussia. He settled in the U.S. in 1872. He emigrated to join his brother who was killed on the day before his arrival. He only learned of Hebrew Union College by reading a book from a library, ostensibly to improve his English, and enrolled in 1875 in the first class of Hebrew Union College, receiving his ordination in 1883. At the College he wrote a periodical for Jewish youth entitled the Sabbath Visitor and three textbooks for religious education. After serving a congregation in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1887 Krauskopf became rabbi of the Reform Congregation Kenesseth Israel, Philadelphia, which he served for the remainder of his life. Krauskopf became a leader of radical Reform, introducing Sunday services and compiling a Service Ritual (1888, 19024). A leading figure in the national organizations of Reform Judaism, he served as a vice president of the conference which adopted the Pittsburgh Platform in 1885, the conference which he first proposed to Kohler, and president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (1903–05). He was active in work for the poor, arguing for increased sanitation and better living conditions. He proposed a program of direct contact between successful and poor Jews, an unsuccessful forerunner of Big Brother programs. A man of forceful energy, he paid attention to the need for Jewish literature, and the outcome was the foundation in 1888 of the Jewish Publication Society of America, of which he was the first honorary secretary. Impressed during a visit to Russia in 1894 by the zeal with which Jews engaged in agriculture where the Russian government allowed, he established the National Farm School at Doylestown, Pennsylvania, in 1896 "as one of the best means of securing safety and happiness to the sorely afflicted of our people." In 1917 he was appointed to direct food conservation among Jews for the U.S. Food Administration. At first an anti-Zionist, Krauskopf modified his attitude as a result of the labors of Jewish agriculturalists in Palestine. There too he was impressed with their agricultural work and soon found himself a defender of Zionism against anti-Zionists. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Feldman, in: AJYB, 26 (1924), 420–47; Pool, in: DAB, 10 (1933), 500–1. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: K.M. Olitzsky, L.H. Sussman, and M.H. Stern, Reform Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (1993). (Sefton D. Temkin)