Proops (Props) Aaron Zvi (“Grisha”) (25 May 1904, Mitau, Courland Province – 4 January 1978, Israel) — public figure, initiator and activist of Betar, founder of musical ensembles and competitions in Israel.
His father, Moshe Yohanan, was one of the early supporters of Hovevei Zion and came from the well-known Proops family of printers in Amsterdam in the 17th–18th centuries. Part of the family emigrated to Lithuania and Latvia and was also engaged in bookselling.
Proops received a national Jewish education and upbringing. He graduated from a Jewish gymnasium in Riga and a teachers’ institute, and later studied law at Prague University. From his youth he was active in the Ze’irei Zion movement. During the Petliura pogroms, he helped organize Jewish self-defence in Ostrogozhsk.
In 1921 he served as chairman of the Association of Students of Jewish Gymnasiums in Riga and secretary of the Jewish Conservatory Students’ Association. In 1923 he met Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky in Riga for the first time. He became one of the initiators of the creation of the new youth movement Betar and its first chairman in Riga. At the 1928 congress marking Betar’s fifth anniversary, he was awarded the title of “First Betar Member.”
He worked in Jewish communities in various countries establishing Betar organizations and took part in the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, and 24th Zionist Congresses. After the split at the Katowice Conference, he became a member of the World Betar Centre. In 1929 he married Maria Arnshtam. From 1929 to 1939 he served as Betar’s representative in Poland, then the largest Betar organization in the world; he was succeeded in this post by Menachem Begin.
In 1938, at the Third World Betar Congress, he was elected to the leadership of the organization. He published in Yiddish-language newspapers and edited the weekly Ha-Medina. In 1939 he was sent to Romania and later arrived in Palestine, which he had visited several times since 1929. At the end of 1939 he was arrested several times by the Mandate authorities, after which he managed to leave for the United States, where he headed the Betar branch.
Proops was the only Betar member in the United States present with Jabotinsky at the time he suffered the heart attack that led to his untimely death. During the Second World War, he organized the first aviation school for Jewish youth and participated in negotiations with the Canadian government aimed at creating an independent Jewish unit within the Royal Canadian Air Force (he was received on this matter by the Deputy Prime Minister).
The entry of the United States into the war disrupted these plans, as U.S. citizens were prohibited from leaving the country to serve in foreign armies. In 1943, he organized numerous demonstrations of schoolchildren aimed at rescuing the Jewish children of Europe. A delegation of 60 schoolchildren was received at the White House in Washington. After the war, in early 1946, he visited displaced persons camps as a military journalist. In 1948, he returned to Israel, where he worked in the economic department of the Jewish Agency.
He served as editor of the Betar weekly Ha-Medina (“The State” in Hebrew) and published articles in the Yiddish-language newspaper Haynt, among others. He translated the works of Jabotinsky: Feuilletons from Russian into German (1927) and The Life of Joseph Trumpeldor into Yiddish, German, and English (1929).
As early as 1935, he founded two Zamir (“Nightingale” in Hebrew) societies in Warsaw and Tel Aviv to organize meetings of Jewish choirs from around the world. This idea was realized in 1952, when he organized a world gathering of Jewish choirs in Ramat Gan, where a major concert took place. Thereafter, such meetings were held every three years. Due to the decline in the number of Jewish choirs worldwide, musical ensembles were later established in Israel.
A music enthusiast, he was also the initiator and organizer of the first World Harp Competition in Israel, which later became a tradition. In 1961, he organized the first summer music festival at the Caesarea amphitheatre; the festival also became a tradition and is now known as the Israel Festival. Streets in Jerusalem, Netanya, and other cities in Israel have been named in his honour.
Lit.: Tidhar Encyclopedia, Tel Aviv, Vol. 4, 1950, p. 1862.