Moshe Katsav, President of Israel

Moshe Katsav was born on the 1st of Tevet 5705 (December 5, 1945) in the city of Yazd, in central Iran. Yazd was called Little Jerusalem because of the abundance of Jewish schools for Torah study, religious sages, and synagogues. The manuscripts of the last prophets were also found in Yazd. Moshe's parents were Goher and Shmuel; Moshe is the eighth descendent of the renowned Kabbalist Mullor Shraga. The Katsav family was part of the Babylonian exile -- Jews who were exiled from the Land of Israel in the year 586 BCE, after the destruction of the first temple.

When Moshe was 1 year old, his family moved from Yazd to Tehran, where his father, Shmuel Katsav, worked as a janitor at the Jewish Koresh School, which belonged to the Alliance network. In August 1951, when Moshe was 5, his family immigrated to Israel. They initially lived in Shaar Haaliya, near Haifa (Moshe received the scar on his face when the family lived there). The young family (his father was 30, his mother 22, and his sister, Shoshana, 1) subsequently moved to the transit camp at Castina, which later changed its name to Kiryat Malachi.

During the severe flooding of the winter of 1951, the tents of the immigrant camp collapsed. His two-month old baby brother Zion died. (Another brother, Aharon, had died in Iran, in Yezd). Moshe was evacuated, with other children, to moshavs in the area. Moshe was evacuated to Kfar Bilu; his parents didn’t know where he had been moved. His worried parents finally found him living with the Sharir family in Kfar Bilu.

The Katsav family lived in a tent in the transit camp for 2 years, experiencing distress, unemployment, and scarce supplies. One day, when Moshe was playing among the tents, Ms. Rivka Gover, known as Mother of Sons, suggested that he study, and that day he began attending first grade in the Haachim School in Kiryat Malachi. Two years later, the family moved to a one-and-a-half-room hut, which had its own private toilet, albeit at some distance from the hut.

After 4 years of living in the hut, the family moved to a permanent semi-detached house with two and a half rooms.

Moshe Katsav first visited Jerusalem when Yanait Ben Zvi, wife of the then President, invited children from transit camps who had excelled in reading public library foundation books to visit the President’s House. During this visit, Moshe was received by the President’s wife and was embraced by Israel’s second President, Yitzhak Ben Zvi.

Moshe Katsav graduated from Kiryat Malachi’s primary school and decided to attend high school at the BenShemen Youth Village, where his studies profoundly affected him. In addition to his studies, Moshe specialized in agricultural work, milking cows and working in fruit tree plantations. He subsequently attended Beer-Tuvia High School. He finished his final examinations and was then drafted into the Israeli Defense Forces, serving in the Signal Corps in the Armored Corps Headquarters. Moshe was the eldest son of a family of nine children. His father was employed as a laborer in a linen thread factory and, later, as a watchman at the Marbak beef-butchering factory. To help support this large family, Moshe was given a lot of leave during his military service; he worked mainly in construction.

When Moshe was discharged from the Israel Defense Forces, he worked as a clerk in Bank Hapoalim and as an assistant in the Volcani Agricultural Research Institute. At that time, he also worked as a journalist at the Yedioth Aharonoth daily newspaper and served as the President of Bnei Brith Youth. There he met his wife Gila, a descendant of the Gur Hassids; her parents were from Poland and the Ukraine.

He saved money to finance his studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he studied economics and history. He was the first student at the University from Kiryat Malachi.

As a student, he began his political activity and was elected as chairman of the Gachal student cell at the Hebrew University in 1969. During his studies, at age 24, he ran successfully for mayor of Kiryat Malachi, becoming the youngest mayor in the country.

Moshe participated in the Six-Day War at Sharm-A-Sheikh. In the Yom Kippur War, he served both in General Avraham Eden’s division and under Brigade Commander Brigadier General Natke Nir. Moshe was among the forces that crossed the Suez Canal, reaching the outskirts of Suez City.

In 1977, he ran successfully for the ninth Knesset in the Likud Party. Thus, Moshe became the first person raised in a development town to be elected to the Knesset. In the ninth Knesset, he held two concurrent posts: Knesset member and head of a council. In the tenth Knesset, Prime Minister Menahem Begin decided to appoint him Deputy Minister of Construction and Housing and in charge, on behalf of the government, of the government's Neighborhood Restoration Project. The Neighborhood Restoration Project was undertaken jointly by the Government and Diaspora Jewry to restore poorer neighborhoods and to uplift thousands of the country's citizens . This project, which brought about a social revolution in Israel, encompassed 84 poor neighborhoods in Israel and involved 240 Jewish communities throughout the world. In the eleventh Knesset, Moshe was elected Minister of Labor and Social Welfare in the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. In this position he brought about the ratification by the government and the Knesset of the most up-to-date social laws, such as the Law of Nursing Care Insurance, which makes it possible to care for the aged who are not independent. This resulted in a substantial increase in the budget for the needy.

In the twelfth Knesset, Moshe was appointed Minister of Transport and a member of the Ministerial Committee for Security Affairs. During this period the transportation infrastructure developed greatly as did Israeli shipping and the El Al company. Moshe Katsav was the only Minister who started and completed the privatisation of government companies under his authority as Minister of Transport. In this position, he brought about airline relations with countries with which Israel did not have diplomatic relations, such as countries in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.
In the thirteenth Knesset, in 1992, upon being relegated to the opposition, Moshe was elected as Chairman of the Likud Party in the Knesset and Chairman of the Israel-China Friendship Association. In the fourteenth Knesset, he was elected Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Tourism, and the Minister for Israeli Arabs.

In August 2000, the Knesset elected Moshe Katsav as President of the State of Israel.
 

Milestones

·  Born in Yezd, Iran, in 1945
·  Immigrated to Israel in 1951
·  Married to Gila, father of five and grandfather of six
·  Resident of Kiryat Malachi since it was established in 1951


Education

·  “Ha'achim” Elementary School in Kiryat Malachi
·  “Ben-Shemen” Youth Village High School
·  Be'er Tuviya Regional High School
·  Graduate of Hebrew University, School of Teaching
·  Graduate of Hebrew University, Department of Economics and History


Public activities
·  Mayor of the Kiryat Malachi City Council, 1969, 1974-1981
·  President of the Young Bnei Brith
·  Chairman of the Gahal Party student faction at Hebrew University
·  Chairman of the “Committee on Adoption,” headed by Justice Moshe Etzioni
·  Chairman of the Committee to Fix Tuition in Institutions of Higher Education
·  Member of the Board of Trustees of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
·  Honorary doctorate from the University of Omaha, Nebraska, USA
·  Honorary doctorate from George Washington University, Washington, D.C.,    USA
·  Honorary doctorate from the University of Hartford, Connecticut, USA
·  Honorary doctorate from Yeshiva University New York, USA
·  Honorary Doctorate from Bar-Ilan University.
·  Honorary Doctorate from the Agricultural University in Beijing, China.
·  Honorary Doctorate from the Sorbonne University in Paris, France.