- David Levy
David Levy (sometimes written David Levi born December 21, 1937) is an Israeli politician. A construction worker originally, he was born in Morocco and made Aliyah to Israel in 1957. His background as a leader of Beit Shean's poor, uneducated, Moroccan working class earned Levy a huge advantage in his early career as a union activist when he began to campaign for membership in the Histadrut Labour Federation's executive body, …
- Yishai Fleisher
Yishai Fleisher is program director at Arutz Sheva's Israel National Radio and co-founder of Kumah - American's Return to Zion. 1 Fleisher was born in Haifa, Israel, to Russian Jewish immigrants, and was raised in the United States before embarking on a campaign to promote mass Aliyah that included his own emigration in 2003. Fleisher hosts a daily news talk show on Israel National Radio 2 that deals with Neo-Zionism, …
- Lev Leviev
Lev Leviev President Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS Israeli entrepreneur and philanthropist, Lev Leviev was born in the then Soviet city of Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1956. His father, Rabbi Avner and his mother Chana Leviev were prominent members of the Bukharian Jewish community. At the age of fifteen in 1971 his family emigrated to Israel.
- Avi Weiss
Rabbi Avraham Weiss, born in 1944, (usually known as Avi Weiss or Rav Avi) is an American Modern Orthodox rabbi who heads the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, Bronx, New York. He is an author, teacher, lecturer, and activist. In addition he is founder and Dean of the "Open Orthodox" Yeshiva in New York - Yeshivat Chovevei Torah.
- Binyamin Ben-Eliezer
Brigadier-General (Res.) Binyamin "Fouad" Ben-Eliezer (born February 12, 1936) is an Israeli politician and former soldier. He was the first Iraqi Jew to lead the Israeli Labour party. On May 4, 2006, he became Minister of National Infrastructure in the Kadima led coalition government. Born in Iraq, Ben-Eliezer immigrated to Israel (an action known to Zionists as the aliyah) in 1950. Ben-Eliezer entered the army in 1954, and became a career soldier.
- Benjamin Pogrund
Benjamin Pogrund is a South African-born author currently living in Israel. He began a career as a journalist in 1958, writing for the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg, where he eventually became deputy-editor. The Rand Daily Mail was the only newspaper in South Africa at that time to report on events in black South Africa townships.
- Arthur Ruppin
Arthur Ruppin (1876-1943) was a Zionist thinker and leader. He was also one of the founders of the city of Tel Aviv, and a pioneering sociologist credited as being "The Father Of Jewish Sociology", directing Berlin's Bureau for Jewish Statistics and Demography from 1902 to 1907. In 1926, Ruppin joined the faculty of Hebrew University in Jerusalem and founded the sociology department. A building there is now named in his honor.
- Shlomo Goren
Shlomo Goren (1917-1994), was a former Orthodox Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel. Goren, born "Gorenchik", was born in Zambrow, Poland and immigrated to British administered Palestine with his family in 1925. He served in the Israel Defense Forces during three wars, wrote several award-winning books on Jewish law, and was appointed Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv in 1968. Rabbi Goren served as Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1973- 1983, …
- Menachem Mazuz
Menachem Mazuz (born 1955) is an Israeli jurist, who currently serves as Israel's Attorney General. Mazuz was born in Djerba, Tunisia. His family immigrated to Israel during his childhood, settling in Netivot. Mazuz served his compulsory military service in the IDF Armor Corps, and then studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, earning his law degree in 1980 specializing in public and administrative law.
- Sami Michael
Sami Michael (born 1926) is an Israeli author and the president of The Association for Civil Rights in Israel. He was born as Sallah Menasse in Baghdad, Iraq, where his father was a merchant. He grew up and was educated in a mixed neighborhood of Jews, Muslims, and Christians. At 15 he joined the Communist underground in Iraq. At 17 he began to write for underground's newspapers. When he was 21 a warrant was issued for his arrest.
- Zalman Shoval
Zalman Shoval is a former Israeli politician and diplomat. Born in Gdańsk, Poland, he made Aliyah in 1938. He was a member of the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 12th Knesset. He was the Israeli ambassadors to the United States from 1990 to 1993 and again from 1998 to 2000.
- Pinhas Lavon
Pinhas Lavon (born July 12, 1904 in Kopychintsy in what was previously Galicia now Ukraine, died January 24, 1976 in Tel Aviv, Israel) was an Israeli politician and labor leader.
- Aaron Aaronsohn
Aaron Aaronsohn (1876-May 15, 1919) was a renowned Romanian-born Jewish botanist, traveler, entrepreneur, and Zionist politician.
- Menachem Mendel Of Vitebsk
Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk (1730 - 1788) was an early leader of Hasidic Judaism. Part of the third generation of Hasidic leaders, he was the primary disciple of Dovber of Mezeritch. From his base in Minsk Menachem Mendel was instrumental in spreading Hasidism throughout White Russia. In the winter of 1772 he, along with Shneur Zalman of Liadi went to the Vilna Gaon, trying to get him to rescind his ban on Hasidism, but the Vilna Gaon would not receive them.
- Shmuel Sackett
"'Shmuel (Seth) Sackett"' is a Religious Zionist leader. He co-founded both the Zo Artzeinu ("This [is] Our Land") and Manhigut Yehudit ("Jewish Leadership") political movements in Israel. During the 1990s Zo Artzeinu opposed the Oslo Accords through civil disobedience. Sackett was born in the United States and studied at Touro College in New York. He was educated in both Talmudic scholarship and secular academic subjects.
- Ninet Tayeb
Ninet Tayeb (also known just as Ninet) (born October 21, 1983, in Kiryat Gat, Israel) is an Israeli pop rock singer who came to fame as the first winner of Kochav Nolad (the Israeli version of Pop Idol). Additionally, Ninet acted for three seasons in the Israeli television drama "HaShir Shelanu" (Our Song). She is of Moroccan Jewish and Tunisian Jewish descent.
- Yechiel Of Paris
Yechiel ben Joseph of Paris (Jehiel of Paris) was a major Talmudic scholar and Tosafist from northern France, father-in-law of Isaac ben Joseph of Corbeil. He was a disciple of Rabbi Judah Messer Leon, and succeeded him in 1225 as head of the Yeshiva of Paris, which then boasted some 300 students; his best known student was Meir of Rothenburg. He is the author of many Tosafot.
- Chaim Sheba
Chaim Sheba (1908, Frasin, near Gura Humora, Romania-1971) was an Israeli physician. Born to the well known Scheiber Hasidic family, in 1929, he ended his medical studies in Vienna and made aliyah in 1933. Until 1936, he served as rural doctor and later in Belinson Hospital. From 1948 to 1951, he was the Surgeon General to the Israel Defense Forces and later became Director General of the Ministry of Health.
- Yosef Dayan
Yosef Dayan was born in 1945 in Mexico to Sephardic Jewish parents from Aleppo, Syria. The Dayan family traces its lineage directly to the Exilarchs of the ancient Near East. Dayan made aliyah (emigrated to Israel) in 1968 and joined Rabbi Meir Kahane's Kach movement. He was instrumental in establishing the Hebron Hills settlement of El-Nakam, which was destroyed on the orders of the then-Minister of Defense, Moshe Arens in 1982. He styles himself as a rabbi.
- Dov Shilansky
Dov Shilansky (born March 21 1924 in Lithuania, Siauliai) is an Israeli politician of Likud. He was a member of Knesset from 1977 to 1996. From 1998 to 1992, he was the Knesset speaker. Shilansky is a survivor of the Holocaust, who made aliyah in 1948. He has had to serve 21 months in prison for organizing demonstrations against Israel accepting Holocaust reparations from Germany.
- Rachel Bluwstein
Rachel Bluwstein Sela (September 20, 1890 - April 16, 1931) was a Hebrew lyric poet of the Zionist settlement years, generally referred to by her pseudonym, Rachel (Hebrew: רחל) or Rachel the poet (Hebrew:
- Boris Gelfand
Boris Gelfand (born 24 June 1968) is a chess grandmaster. Born in Minsk, Belarus, he made aliyah to Israel in 1998, and now lives in Rishon LeZion. He currently is a member of the Israeli national chess team. On the July 2007 FIDE list he had an Elo rating of 2733, making him number 13 in the world and Israel's number 1.
- Hermann Struck
Hermann Struck (Chaim Aaron ben David) (1876-1944) born in Berlin where he was educated at the Berlin Academy. He is author of Die Kunst des Radierens (The Art of Etching, 1908) and was the teacher of Marc Chagall, Lovis Corinth Joseph Budko and Lesser Ury. During WW1 he served in the German army, in those parts of the Russian Empire that are now Poland, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Russia. An Orthodox Jew and a committed Zionist, he first visited the Land of Israel in 1903, …
- Chalom Messas
Chalom Messas (1909-2003) was the Grand Rabbi of Morocco, and after making aliyah became the Sephardic Great Rabbi of Jerusalem. He wrote many books "Mizrah Chemech, Tevouot Chemech, Chemech Oumaguen, Beit Chemech" and "Veham Hachemech".
- Baruch Gigi
Rabbi Baruch Gigi is a co-Rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem. Rav Gigi was born in Morocco and immigrated to Israel at the age of 11. He first attended Yeshivat Har Etzion as a student in 1974 after studying in a yeshiva high school in Haifa. He was ordained by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and received a BEd degree from Herzog College.
- Yehoshua Stampfer
Yehoshua Stampfer (1852 - 1908) was one of the founders of the city of Petah Tikva in Israel. Petah Tikva was founded in 1878 and is nicknamed "Mother of Settlements" since it was the first renewed modern Jewish agricultural settlement in Palestine at the time. Stampfer was born in Hungary to a religious family. Seeing the results of the national success of the Hungarians in 1867, he longed for a similar independence for his people in Eretz Yisrael.
- Paul L. Smith
Paul L. Smith (born February 5, 1939 in Everett, Massachusetts) is a Hollywood character actor. Burly, bearded, and imposing, has appeared in films and occasionally on TV since the 1970s, generally playing "heavies" and bad guys. He is sometimes credited as Paul Smith or Paul Lawrence Smith. Smith's first acting role was in the 1960 film "Exodus" which was filmed in Israel. This was his first visit to the country.
- Dan Tsalka
Dan Tsalka was an Israeli writer. Dan Tsalka was born in 1936 in Warsaw. In World War II his family fled to the Soviet Union, where they lived in Siberia and then Kazakhstan. At the close of the war, when he was ten, he returned with his family to Poland, to the city of Wrocław. He studied humanities at the city's university, engaging in boxing, an activity that appeared later in the novel "Gloves". In 1957 he immigrated to Israel in the "Gomułka Aliyah".
- Vera Weizmann
Vera Weizmann (1881-1968) was a wife of Chaim Weizman, medical doctor and a Zionist activist. She was born in the town of Rostov, Russia and acquired her medical training in Geneva, Switzerland. She married Chaim Weizmann in 1906, and they had two sons. The Weizman family lived in Manchester, England for thirty years (1906-1937). In 1913, Vera Weizman received her English medical license and worked as a doctor in the public health service at seven clinics for infants, …
- Hana Greenfield
Hana Greenfield was born in Kolin, Czechoslovakia, from where she was deported to Terezin, Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. Hana is the author of "Fragments of Memory" published by Gefen Publishing House (1998, c1998, revised edition 2006). Her book is a memoir with a collection of articles written over a period of a few years, as the incidents flashed back into her memory. Many of her accounts have appeared in publications in various languages: Hebrew, Polish, French, …
- Asher Hirsch Ginsberg
Asher Hirsch Ginsberg (1856 - 1927), primarily known by his pen name Ahad Ha'am (Hebrew: "one of the people" [Genesis 26:10], was an essayist, and one of the great pre-state Zionist thinkers. Born in Skvyra, today Ukraine, Ginsberg was a friend and supporter of Leon Pinsker, and a leader of the Hovevei Zion ("lovers of Zion") movement. "Hovevei Zion" began as independent study circles in the late 19th century, …
- Daniel Rona
Daniel Rona is a Latter-day Saint (LDS) tour guide and theologian, well known in the LDS community for being the only officially licensed Israeli tour guide with LDS membership. He is also a theological researcher who promotes asserted links between LDS and Jewish traditions. Rona regards himself as both LDS and Jewish. Daniel Rona was born in 1941 in Palestine to two German-Jewish refugee parents.
- Moshe Sanbar
Moshe Sanbar (born 1926) is an economist and Israeli public figure. Former governor of the Bank of Israel (1971 - 1976). Sanbar was born on March 29 1926 in Kecskemet, Hungary. His highschool studies ended upon the Nazi occupation of Hungary. In June 1944 he was drafted to the Labour Service and shortly later sent to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany. His Parents, Solomon and Margaret Sandberg, were murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.
- Yitzhak Frenkel
Yitzhak Frenkel (1899-1981) (variant names Isaac Frenel, Isaac Fraenkel, Yitzhak Frenel, Yitshak Frenkel-Frenel, Alexandre Frenel, Izhak Frenel) was an important Israeli painter, born in 1899 in Odessa, Ukraine. He was a great-grandson of the famed Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev. In 1917, he studied under Aleksandra Ekster at the Art Academy in Odessa.
- Debbie Gross
Debbie Gross is a developmental psychologist. She is the founder and director of the Crisis Center for Religious Women in Jerusalem, Israel, which addresses domestic violence in the ultra religious orthodox communities Ms. Gross is also a member of the Jerusalem Advisory Board Against Family Violence, the Board of Directors of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel and the Knesset's Committee for the Status of Women.
- Alcina Lubitch Domecq
Alcina Lubitch Domecq (b. 1953) is a Jewish Guatemalan short story writer. She was born in Guatemala to an Auschwitz survivor father, and an Iberian-Guatemalan mother. After her parents' divorce, she moved to Mexico in the sixties and left in the early 1970s. After a stay in Europe, she made aliyah to Israel where she now works as a janitor in a Haifa hospital.
- Marcelo Birmajer
Marcelo Birmajer is an Argentine Jewish author, best known for writing the script for the 2004 film El abrazo partido. Birmajer's work usually revolves around the Porteño neighbourhood of Once and its colorful inhabitants. Most stories feature Jewish characters, and he frequently uses for them the names Javier, or Mordejai depending on the character's level of religious observance. He also addresses Jewish issues such as synagogue attendance, Bar Mitzvahs, …
- Elyah Lopian
Eliyohu Lopian, known as Reb Elyah, was among the most prominent rabbis of the Mussar movement. As a disciple of the Kelm Talmud Torah method, he was known for his strict keeping of order and strong self-control. It is told that he would not turn his head without a reason and a structured decision. Lopian was born in Kelmė, Lithuania. In his youth he studied at the yeshiva in Lomza.
- Yohanan Cohen
Yohanan Cohen (b. December 31, 1917) is a Polish-Israeli zionist who immigrated to Palestine 1937. He was a member of the Knesset from the Progressive Party and held numerous leadership positions in the military, government, and activist organizations related to Israel.
- Chaim Hirschensohn
Rabbi Chaim Hirschensohn (1857-1935) was born in Tzfat, (city in the Galilee, Israel), to Rabbi Yaakov Mordechai Hirschensohn, who had emigrated there from Pinsk in 1848. In 1864, the family (which included Chaim's older brother, Rabbi Yitzchok Hirschensohn) moved to Jerusalem. Like his brother, the young Zionist Chaim Hirschensohn worked with Eliezer Ben-Yehuda to revive spoken Hebrew and helped found the Safah Berurah ("Plain Language") society in Jerusalem.