Blass, Simcha

Biography / Administrative History

Hydrological engineer and entrepreneur Simcha Blass was born in 1897 in Warsaw, Poland, the second of five children. As a boy, his education consisted of both religious and secular studies, and early on he developed a strong interest in engineering and also became intent on settling in the Jewish homeland. At the age of 17 he began his studies at the Wawelberg-Rotband mechanical-technical institute. In 1919 he was drafted and spent 18 months as a private in the Polish Army. After his discharge, he completed his studies and obtained an engineering credential.

A gifted engineer with a talent for invention, Blass spent most of the 1920s perfecting an implement for planting wheat that eventually increased crop yields by 300 percent. He saw this new device as a key to Jewish settlers' self-sufficiency. But he did not succeed in marketing his invention to investors and manufacturers and was particularly disappointed that it failed to take hold in Palestine. Eventually he came to realize that the main barrier to successful agricultural development and increased Jewish settlement in Palestine was the lack of a steady water supply, and his focus shifted to hydrological engineering.

Simcha Blass's involvement with the development of water resources, first in Palestine and then in the newly established State of Israel, began on a small scale. In the late 1920s, he settled in Deganyah Bet, a small agricultural community on Lake Kineret, and served as a consultant to several neighboring communities who had obtained funds from the Jewish Agency to install a pumping station to use Jordan River water for irrigation. His success in this project sparked a passion that would endure throughout his career. In 1930, Blass brought his wife from Bialystok, Poland and relocated to Tel Aviv, where he established a hydrological engineering firm. Over the next 30 years, Blass and his associates were key participants in the planning and construction of hydrological projects all over Israel, including the National Water Carrier. This ambitious project, completed in 1964, consists of a series of underground pipelines, open canals, reservoirs, and tunnels, which carry water from Lake Kineret to the Negev

Simcha Blass died in 1982, in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Sources:

Simhah Blas, Me merivah u-maas (Water in strife and action). Ramat-Gan: Masadah, 1973.

Dov Sitton, Development of water limited water resources: Historical and technological aspects. The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, 2005. Retrieved from http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Environment/water.html

From the guide to the Simcha Blass Hydrology of Israel collection, 1935-1955, (Stanford University. Libraries. Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives.)