Mordechai Namir

Mordechai Namir was born in 1897 in Nemyriv

Mordechai Namir was born Mordechai Nemirovsky in Nemyriv, in the Russian Empire, to Yitzhak and Batya. He studied at a heder as a child and later studied law and economics at Odessa University.

In 1924 the Soviet authorities arrested him for underground Zionist activity. He was released that year and immigrated to the Land of Israel, where he worked as a laborer and at the Davar newspaper.

He was secretary of Ahdut HaAvoda from 1926 to 1930 and headed the Histadrut statistics department from 1929 to 1935. From 1935 he sat on the Tel Aviv city council and from 1936 led the city's workers' council. He also served in the Haganah command.

After independence he served as Israel's envoy in Moscow. He was general secretary of the Histadrut from 1950 to 1956 and a Mapai Knesset member from 1951 to 1969. He became Minister of Labour in 1956, serving until 1959.

As mayor of Tel Aviv he worked on clearing poor neighborhoods and expanding education and welfare services. He retired for health reasons in 1969 and published 2 memoirs. He was married to Dora Grodsky and later to Ora Namir, and died in 1975.