Eliezer Joffe

Eliezer Joffe was born in 1936 in Tel Aviv

Eliezer Joffe was born in 1936 in Tel Aviv to Hana and Israel. His father was active in the Haganah and was among the first settlers of the Tzahala neighborhood. The family later moved there.

He studied at the Bilu school and at the Montefiore vocational school in Tel Aviv. As a youth he joined a flying club and was active in Gadna Air, where he became an instructor. In 1955 he survived a midair collision with a glider by making a forced landing in a plowed field.

In the IDF he completed officers' school and the Air Force flight course. He commanded a central Air Force control unit and was promoted to colonel in 1980. In 1963 he was badly hurt in a glider crash, and he retired from the IDF in 1982.

He then headed management development at Israel Aerospace Industries under Avigdor Kaplan. When Kaplan became director general of Clalit Health Services in 1993, Joffe joined him as head of the wages and labor agreements division.

He served on the Tzahala neighborhood committee and later headed it, leading infrastructure and renovation projects. He married Gita Shatzman in 1956, and they had 2 daughters. Gita died in 2012.