Sheldon Adelson, 1933-2021
Casino magnate Adelson was one of the biggest donors to Israeli and Jewish causes. He launched and owned Israel Hayom, Israel’s most widely distributed newspaper, and was a stalwart backer of Benjamin Netanyahu. He funded…
Gershon Agronsky, 1894-1959
Born in Ukraine, Agronsky immigrated to the United States. He wrote for Jewish newspapers and later for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. In 1918 he joined Britain’s Jewish Legion in Palestine. He dived into Zionist politics…
Robert Aumann, 1930-
Aumann is an Israeli-American mathematician who shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics in 2005 for his game theory analysis of conflict and cooperation. His family escaped Germany two weeks before Kristallnacht. A Religious Zionist,…
Noah Barou, 1889-1955
Born in Ukraine, Barou was a trade unionist and political activist who was active in Poalei Zion. After that group broke with the new Soviet authorities, he moved to London, where he helped found the…
Orna Berry, 1949-
A computer scientist and tech entrepreneur, Berry has been a driver of innovation and received Ben-Gurion University’s 2012 Yakirat Ha’Negev award for excellence in technology. In 1996 she became the first female chief scientist at…
Max Bodenheimer, 1865-1940
An early leader of German Zionism, Bodenheimer helped establish a Jewish bank in Ottoman Palestine and the Jewish National Fund, for which he was the first chairman. Bodenheimer corresponded with Theodor Herzl, attended the first…
Meir Dizengoff, 1861-1936
A native of what is now Moldova, Dizengoff became a leader with Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) in Russia. He moved to Palestine in 1893 and managed a glass factory. He opposed the Uganda Plan…
Levi Eshkol, 1895-1969
Eshkol, Israel’s third prime minister, was a farm worker after arriving from Ukraine in 1914. He organized labor and became a Mapai and Jewish Agency leader. He raised money for arms and for immigrant absorption….
Maxine Fassberg, 1953-
Named one of CNN’s “10 Most Powerful Women in Tech” in 2010, Fassberg immigrated from South Africa in 1975, rose to become CEO of Intel Israel and retired in 2016 after 33 years with the…
Berthold Feiwel, 1875-1937
Feiwel was born in Moravia, now in the Czech Republic. He co-founded the Jewish People’s Voice in 1897 and the Jiidischer Verlag publishing house in Berlin in 1902 and served as the editor of Theodor…
Moses Hess, 1812-1875
Born into an Orthodox family in Germany in 1812, Hess became interested in socialism, befriended Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and contributed to the Communist Manifesto. He recognized that German nationalism would inspire increased antisemitism….
Eli Hurvitz, 1932-2011
Hurvitz, who was born in Jerusalem, in 1976 merged three companies, including one where he started working while attending the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, into Teva Pharmaceuticals. It became the world’s largest manufacturer of generic…
Daniel Kahneman, 1934-
Kahneman is an author and emeritus professor of behavioral psychology at Princeton who shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2002 for his work on prospect theory, which explores how people make decisions under…
Eliezer Kaplan, 1891-1952
A native of Minsk in present-day Belarus, Kaplan was an active Socialist Zionist before immigrating to Palestine in 1919. He served as the treasurer of the Jewish Agency and a member of the Zionist Executive…
Berl Katznelson, 1887-1944
Belarus-born Katznelson co-founded the Histadrut labor federation and advocated for labor unity to uplift Jewish workers and small landholders. Immigrating to the Land of Israel in 1909, Katznelson became involved in labor councils. He helped…
Pinhas Sapir, 1906-1975
Labor Party politician Sapir played a vital role in the development of the Israeli economy. Born in Poland as Pinhas Kozlowski, he immigrated to the Land of Israel in 1929. He served in the Cabinet…
Dan Shechtman, 1941-
Tel Aviv native Shechtman won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2011 for his discovery of quasicrystals, which are crystals whose atoms are not organized in repeating patterns. A materials science professor at the Technion,…
Ada Yonath, 1939-
Yonath is the first Israeli woman to receive a Nobel Prize, sharing the chemistry prize in 2009 for work on ribosomes, which are crucial proteins in cells. She used X-ray crystallography to map ribosomes’ structure,…
