Stef Wertheimer

Stef Wertheimer was born in 1926 in Kippenheim

Wertheimer was born in 1926 in Kippenheim, Germany, to a Jewish family. His father had lost a leg in World War I. The family moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1937 to escape the Nazis.

He attended the Tel-Nordau School in Tel Aviv but left without finishing. He worked in a camera repair shop and studied optics under Professor Emanuel Goldberg. In 1943 he was sent to a Royal Air Force base in Bahrain to repair optical equipment.

He joined the Palmach in 1945 and served as a technical officer. The British held him for 4 months in 1946. He later developed weapons for the Haganah and served in the Yiftach Brigade during the War of Independence.

After being dismissed from Rafael in 1952 for lacking an engineering degree, he opened a workshop in Nahariya that became ISCAR. In 1968 he founded the company that became Blades Technology. In 2006 Berkshire Hathaway bought 80% of ISCAR for $4 billion.

He served in the Knesset from 1977 to 1981, first for the Democratic Movement for Change and then for Shinui. He built industrial parks in places such as Tefen, Tel Hai, Omer and Nazareth, and promoted a Marshall Plan for the Middle East. He died in 2025.