Pinchas Sapir

Pinchas Sapir, 1955

Pinchas Sapir ( Hebrew פִּנְחָס סַפִּיר Pinchas Sappīr , originally Pinchas Kozłowski ; * October 15, 1906 in Suwalki , Poland ; † August 12, 1975 in Moshav Nevatim in Israel ) was an influential Israeli Labor Party politician and for several years was finance minister, trade and industry minister, and minister without portfolio .

Sapir attended a religious high school in Warsaw and was trained as a teacher. Even then he was involved in Hechaluz . In 1929 he emigrated to Palestine and settled in Kfar Saba , where he worked in the orange plantations and at night as an accountant and made his first public appearance on the workers' and municipal councils. He set up a loan fund and a housing project for Jewish immigrants. As a member of the Marxist labor party Mifleget Poalei Eretz Israel , he campaigned for workers' rights, organized strikes and demonstrations, and was imprisoned for four months in 1933 for these activities and demonstrations against British rule. Between 1937 and 1947 he served as Levi Eschkol's deputy in the Mekorot water company .

Sapir became a member of the Avoda and, as a member of the " Negev Committee", planned the southern defense of Israel. During the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, Sapir was in charge of supplying the troops as a lieutenant colonel and also traveled abroad in this capacity, where he later worked successfully as a fundraiser.

After the war, Sapir was director general of the Ministry of Defense and later of the Ministry of Finance. He got his first ministerial post in 1955, in the 7th government coalition, as Minister of Trade and Industry. In 1959 he was elected for the Mapai in the Knesset , of which he was a member of parliament until his death. When Eschkol became Prime Minister in 1963 , he appointed Sapir Minister of Finance, a position he held with interruptions until 1974, in the meantime he was again Minister of Trade and Industry and Minister without Portfolio. After leaving the Ministry of Finance, he was chairman of the Jewish Agency and the WZO from 1974 to 1975 .

Sapir was an extremely energetic politician and had a great influence not only on the decision to make Golda Meïr successor to Eschkol, but later also to replace Rabin . As finance minister he pursued a policy of state interventionism and was therefore criticized by supporters of the free market economy .

In Kfar Saba the cultural center and the surrounding area is named after him. He is also the namesake of the Sapir College , which is located in the Scha'ar HaNegev district , and the Sapir Business and Technology Park in Netanya .

Web links

Commons : Pinchas Sapir  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Joan Comay, Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok: Who's who in Jewish history - After the period of the Old Testament, Routledge, London, 2002, p. 324
2. ↑ www.jewishagency.org / p. 57 ( Memento of the original dated December 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 5.2 MB)