Jacob Ben-Sira

Jacob Ben-Sira was born in 1899 in Russian Empire

Jacob Ben-Sira was born Jacob Shiffman in 1899 in Kaniv, in the Russian Empire. He was the eldest son of Pinchas Shiffman, who taught Hebrew at the Lida yeshiva headed by Rabbi Yitzchak Yaakov Reines. Jacob studied at that yeshiva before he moved to the Land of Israel alone in 1913.

In Tel Aviv he studied at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium and lived in Neve Tzedek. During World War I he lost contact with his family, and he finished school in 1918. He then worked in farms and vineyards, joined Haganah actions in Jerusalem in 1920, and later helped build the Tiberias to Tzemach road.

With a scholarship, he left in late 1921 to study engineering at the University of London. He supported himself by teaching Hebrew there. His partner and later wife, Chaya Horowitz, joined him in London.

After returning, he worked in 1926 as an engineer at Solel Boneh, including on the restoration of the Tower of David. He then assisted Clifford Holliday in the British Mandate government, working on Jerusalem after the 1927 earthquake and on town plans for Beersheba and Tel Aviv. As Tel Aviv's city engineer from 1929 to 1950, he promoted the International Style, later known as the White City, which UNESCO recognized as a World Heritage Site in 2003.

In 1945 the family name changed from Shiffman to Ben-Sira. He died in 1994. In 2011 the Tel Aviv municipality named a street after him.