Shalom Levin

Shalom Levin was born in 1916 in Rakaŭ

Levin was born in 1916 in Rakaŭ near Minsk, to Yehoshua Levin and Miriam Shifrin. His family later moved to Smarhon. He studied in yeshivas and then at the Hebrew gymnasium and the Tarbut teachers seminary in Vilnius, and was active in the HeHalutz movement in Poland.

In 1937 he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine and worked as a porter in Haifa Port. From 1937 to 1950 he taught in Kfar Yehoshua, Binyamina, Deganya and Jerusalem. He earned an MA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1952 and a PhD in philosophy of education there in 1976.

He was general secretary of the Israel Teachers Union from 1955 to 1980 and its president from 1980 until his death. In his time teachers' pay was linked to that of public service engineers, and he pushed for teacher training and smaller classes. From 1963 he also headed the International Federation of Teachers' Associations.

A member of the Mapai central committee, he was elected to the Knesset for the Alignment in 1969 and again in 1973. He was left off the list in 1977 and then served on the Histadrut organizing committee. He died in 1995.