Moshe Sharett

Moshe Sharett was born in 1894 in Kherson

Moshe Sharett was born Moshe Chertok in Kherson, in the Russian Empire, in 1894. His family moved to Ottoman Palestine in 1906, lived for a time in the village of Ein Siniya, and later settled in Jaffa. The family was among the founders of Tel Aviv.

He finished in the first class of the Herzliya Hebrew High School in 1913 and studied music at the Shulamit Conservatory. He went on to study law in Istanbul, but World War I cut his studies short. He later attended the London School of Economics in 1922.

After the war he worked for the Yishuv's representative bodies and was active in Ahdut Ha'Avoda and then Mapai. He worked at the Davar newspaper from 1925 to 1931. In 1933 he became head of the Jewish Agency's political department, a post he held until 1948.

He signed Israel's Declaration of Independence and served as foreign minister, taking part in the armistice talks that ended the 1948 war. He worked for Israel's admission to the UN. Between Ben-Gurion's two terms he was prime minister, a period that included the Lavon Affair.

He left the government in 1956 amid disputes over the Czechoslovak-Egyptian arms deal. In his later years he chaired the Am Oved publishing house and Beit Berl, and from 1961 the Jewish Agency. He died in 1965.