Haim Saban, 1944-
Saban is a multibillionaire music, film and TV producer who founded Saban Entertainment, creator of “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.” A native of Egypt, he immigrated to Israel in 1956. He started a tour promotion business…
Anwar Sadat, 1918-1981
Sadat was elevated from Egypt’s vice president to president after Gamal Abdel Nasser died in 1970. With Syria, he launched the October 1973 war against Israel. He flew to Israel four years later in pursuit…
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…
Noa Sattath, 1977-
Sattath became the executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel in November 2021 after 11 years leading the Reform movement’s Israel Religious Action Center. The rabbi also served as the executive director…
Myriam Schach, 1867-1956
Schach, a Frenchwoman, joined the Hibbat Zion (Lovers of Zion) movement. She attended all the Zionist Congresses through the 1920s and was a forceful speaker. She supported Theodor Herzl and criticized his rivals for not…
Zvi Hermann Schapira, 1840-1898
Lithuanian-born Schapira was a math professor at the University of Heidelberg. He first proposed creating what became the Jewish National Fund to purchase and develop land in Palestine. At the First Zionist Congress in 1897…
Boris Schatz, 1866-1932
Born into a religious family in Lithuania, Schatz pursued a career as an artist. In 1903 he met Theodor Herzl and became a staunch Zionist. He received support from the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905…
Alexander Schindler, 1925-2000
Serving from 1973 to 1996 as the president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Schindler aligned the Reform movement with Zionism. Going back to the mid-19th century, Reform had emphasized Jewish religion over peoplehood….
Gershom Scholem, 1897-1982
A brilliant scholar of Jewish mysticism and messianism, Berlin-born Scholem arrived in the Land of Israel in 1923 after completing his doctorate and taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he was the first…
Charles and Lynn Schusterman, 1935-2000 and 1939-
Charles Schusterman, born in the Soviet Union, and wife Lynn, a Missouri native, used their Oklahoma oil wealth to launch the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies. The foundation is deeply involved in Israeli and…
Hannah Senesh, 1921-1944
Senesh, a native of Hungary, became a martyr and inspiration to generations of soldiers. She was a poet best known for “Eli Eli” (“Oh, God, My God”) who immigrated to Palestine in 1939. A Haganah…
Enzo Sereni, 1905-1944
An Italian Zionist, Sereni was a member of the British army’s Jewish Brigade in World War II. He assisted in getting Jews out of Germany, distributed anti-fascist materials in Egypt and worked with the Youth…
Stav Shaffir, 1985-
Shaffir was the youngest-ever female member of the Knesset when she was elected with the Labor Party in 2013. She remained in the Knesset until 2020. She leads the Green Party. She rose to prominence…
Nachman Shai, 1946-
Shai, a Labor Party member who served in the Knesset from 2009 to 2019, became the Diaspora affairs minister under Naftali Bennett in 2021. He was the IDF’s chief spokesman during the 1991 Persian Gulf…
Ayelet Shaked, 1976-
An electrical engineer, Shaked in June 2021 became the interior minister under Naftali Bennett, her close ally as they have moved from the Jewish Home to the New Right and Yamina. She served in the…
Shimon Shamir, 1933-
Shimon Shamir was Israel’s first ambassador to Jordan and its second to Egypt. A scholar of the Middle East, he is a professor emeritus in the faculty of humanities at Tel Aviv University. He was…
Yitzhak Shamir, 1915-2012
Belarus-born Shamir was the seventh prime minister, serving two terms between 1983 and 1992. He was a Lehi leader during the British Mandate. As a Likud prime minister, he approved Operation Solomon to airlift in…
Anita Shapira, 1940-
Shapira is a historian of Zionism and modern Israel and a professor emerita at Tel Aviv University. Her books include 2012 National Jewish Book Award winner Israel: A History and biographies of Berl Katznelson, David…
Natan Sharansky, 1948-
Sharansky, a physicist and writer, was a Soviet refusenik imprisoned in a Siberian labor camp from 1977 to 1986. Upon his release, he joined his wife, Avital, in Israel. He became an activist for immigrant…
Moshe Sharett, 1894-1965
The first foreign minister and second prime minister of Israel, Ukraine-born Sharett (originally Shertok) was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and one of the key negotiators of cease-fire agreements that ended the War…
Ariel Sharon, 1928-2014
Sharon led IDF commandos in the 1950s, was a field commander in 1967 and drove the Sinai counteroffensive in 1973. As defense minister, he launched the First Lebanon War, which resulted in an 18-year occupation,…
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,…
Naomi Shemer, 1930-2004
Singer-songwriter Shemer was considered the “first lady of Israeli song.” She wrote “Jerusalem of Gold” (“Yerushalayim Shel Zahav”) for the 1967 Israel Song Festival, and it became the anthem for a united Jerusalem after the…
Reuven Shiloah, 1909-1959
Born in Jerusalem, Shiloah was the founding director of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. His support of the British military during World War II included planning Hannah Senesh‘s mission. Before independence he obtained the Arab…
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