Baruch Ostrovsky (1890–1960; ) was the first mayor of Ra'anana, Israel, and served as mayor for 28 years. He championed democracy, equality, education and organized Jewish labor. Background Baruch Ostrovsky was born in Russian Empire, in the town of Rogachov (now in Belarus), in 1890. In early childhood, receiving a traditional Jewish education, he already demonstrated a craving for higher education and Zionism. In 1912 he immigrated to Palestine alone, laboring with the pioneers of the Second Aliyah and joining the HaShomer organization. A year later, he departed for the U.S. with the intention of marrying his fiancée, who had by then arrived there from Russia. The political situation—the outbreak of World War I—obstructed his plans to return at once with his family. In the USA In 1913 he took part in the founding of Ahuza Alef in New York, an organization dedicated to the purchase of lands and the establishment of a Hebrew settlement, to be inhabited by Jews tilling their own soil. While in the US, Ostrovsky earned his living teaching a wide variety of subjects, including Hebrew, history, Bible, as well as Yiddish. He became a renowned and respected educational figure, as director and inspector of schools as well as principal of the teacher's seminary of the Workmen's Circle Jewish educational system. Contemporaneously with his educational work, Ostrovsky was active in the Zionist Movement's labor organization, Poale Zion, with the leaders David Ben-Gurion, Ber Borochov and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. He directed and published the Youth Organizations' journal. In Eretz Israel In 1930 Ostrovsky finally succeeded in fulfilling his Zionist ambition by giving up his comfortable existence in the USA and settling in Ra'anana, a small town in the Sharon plain, with his wife and two children. "As a Zionist, I abandoned my source of income, the respected position I acquired in America as the principal of a high school in NY, as the head of the Jewish Teachers' Union, as editor of a Jewish Journal and as author of Yiddish school books and immigrated to Eretz Yisrael. A Zionist is not only said ..." (Excerpt from Ostrovsky's Diary) Ostrovsky regarded Ra'anana as his life project and as mayor, he dedicated himself fully and wholeheartedly to Ra'anana's construction and development. His public service was a non-paid voluntary post as he refused payment in excess of the salary of an agricultural day laborer, which he was earning. The equivalent of