David Bannett

David Bannett was born in 1921 in New York City

David Rephael Bannett was born in New York in 1921 to William and Esther Bannett, both born in the US. He went to a public school and studied at a Talmud Torah in the afternoons. He began keeping mitzvot at his bar mitzvah.

He finished Abraham Lincoln High School in 1937 and studied mathematics, physics and engineering at the City College of New York. In World War II he taught radar systems in the US Army.

Before Israel's War of Independence, the Haganah recruited him in New York to buy radar and communication equipment in secret. A barge he loaded with military gear, including dismantled P-51 Mustang aircraft, was seized, and he had to leave the US for a time. He moved to Israel in 1949 with his wife Esther Chana and their 2 children.

He was the first electronics engineer at Tadir, later part of Tadiran, and then worked at Elco and advised the security industry, the Shin Bet and the Mossad. He was the first electronics lecturer at Bar-Ilan University, teaching there until 1994, and joined the first staff of the Jerusalem College of Technology. In the mid-1950s he helped found the Beit Hazon neighborhood in Kfar Haroeh.

As the first engineer of the Institute for Science and Halacha, he developed the Shabbat elevator and other devices for Sabbath use. He traveled to Jewish communities abroad as a volunteer adviser on Shabbat elevators. He blew the shofar for 82 continuous years and died in 2022.