Joseph Burg

Joseph Burg was born in 1909 in Dresden

Shlomo Yosef Burg was born in Dresden, Germany, on 31 January 1909. He studied at the University of Berlin and at the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin, and earned a doctorate from the University of Leipzig. In Leipzig he joined religious Zionist activity in the Mizrachi movement.

He was ordained as a rabbi and immigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1939. He taught at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium and was a research fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After World War II he ran a European office in Paris that helped refugees and their immigration.

Burg entered the first Knesset in 1949 with Hapoel HaMizrachi and became deputy speaker. He served as minister of health, minister of postal services, and later as minister of welfare, internal affairs, religious affairs and without portfolio. In 1980, as interior minister, he dismissed police chief Herzl Shafir, who then raised claims against him that the attorney general mostly rejected.

He resigned from the government in 1986. He later headed the World Mizrachi movement and the Yad Vashem council, and chaired the judges of the International Bible Contest for Youth from 1966 to 1998. He was married to Rivka Slonim and had 3 children, including Avraham Burg. He died in Jerusalem on 15 October 1999.