Elimelech Rimalt

Elimelech Rimalt was born in 1907 in Bochnia

Rimalt was born in 1907 in Bochnia, in Galicia, to Shmuel and Tzila. He studied at a heder, a yeshiva and a Hebrew high school in Kraków. In Poland he helped found the Akiva Hebrew youth organization.

He was ordained as a rabbi at the rabbinical seminary in Vienna and earned a PhD in philosophy at the University of Vienna. There he chaired the Zionist students group. He served as a community rabbi in Innsbruck and the Tyrol region, and after the Anschluss he ran the emigration office of the Jewish community in Vienna.

In 1939 he immigrated to the Land of Israel and became headmaster of the Ohel Shem high school in Ramat Gan. He later directed the city's education department until 1952. From 1955 to 1959 he was deputy mayor of Ramat Gan.

He entered the Knesset in 1951 for the General Zionists and later represented the Liberal Party, Gahal and Likud. He chaired the Knesset education committee and led the Rimalt Committee, whose proposals for six-year primary schools and middle schools the Knesset adopted in 1968. He was Minister of Postal Services from 1969 until Gahal left the government in 1970, and later chaired the Liberal Party until 1975.

In 1974 he proposed a peace plan between Israel and Jordan, and in 1975 he backed the interim agreement with Egypt. He did not run in the 1977 elections and withdrew from the race for president. He was married to Wilma, had 2 children, and died in 1987.