Binyamin Sasson

Binyamin Sasson was born in 1903 in Baghdad

Binyamin Sasson was born Saleh Silas in Baghdad in 1903, during the Ottoman era. His parents were Shlomo Meir Ezra and Aziza. His family branch was called Binyamin Sasson to tell it apart from the David Sasson branch.

In 1920 he went to Britain to continue his studies. He studied law at the University of Oxford from 1923 to 1927 and earned a B.C.L. and an M.A. From 1929 he worked as a lawyer in London, and he married Zelda Harris of Liverpool.

He moved to the Land of Israel and settled in Tel Aviv, where his son Meir David was born in 1934. He became president of the Iraqi community in Tel Aviv and deputy chairman of the Committee of Sephardi Jewry. He was also on the board of the World Federation of Sephardi Communities and helped found Rotary in Israel, heading its Tel Aviv club from 1945 to 1946.

Sasson served as a municipal judge in Tel Aviv. In 1951 he was elected to the Knesset for the Sephardim and Oriental Communities party, which soon merged into the General Zionists. He sat on committees including Constitution, Law and Justice and Foreign Affairs and Defense, and was not reelected in 1955. He died on 1 May 1989.