First Knesset

On 14 February 1949, Tu BiShvat 5709, the 120 members elected three weeks earlier gathered at the Jewish Agency building in Jerusalem for the opening of Israel's Constituent Assembly. Chaim Weizmann, President of the Provisional State Council, opened the session, and Joseph Sprinzak of Mapai was elected speaker. In the elections of 25 January 1949, Israel's first, about 87 percent of voters took part; David Ben-Gurion's Mapai won 46 seats, Mapam 19, the United Religious Front 16 and Menachem Begin's Herut 14. Two days later the assembly passed the Transition Law, which gave it the name Knesset, and elected Weizmann the first President of Israel.

The name and the number of 120 members recall the Knesset HaGedolah, the Great Assembly of the time of Ezra. The First Knesset sat until 1951 and laid the foundations of the state: the Compulsory Education Law of 1949, the Law of Return of 1950, and the Harari Resolution of June 1950, which chose to write Israel's constitution chapter by chapter, in Basic Laws, instead of all at once.