Yair Tzaban

Yair Tzaban was born in 1930 in Jerusalem

Tzaban was born in Jerusalem in 1930 and studied at the Hebrew Gymnasium Rehavia. He fought in the Palmach in the 1948 war and helped found Kibbutz Tzora. In 1952 he and his wife Shulamit left the kibbutz and moved to Tel Aviv.

He trained as a teacher at Seminar HaKibbutzim and taught youth in poor areas of Tel Aviv. He holds a BA in Jewish and general philosophy from Tel Aviv University.

In 1953 he left Mapam with Moshe Sneh's group, which joined Maki in 1954. He chaired the Maki politburo after Sneh's death in 1972, and later helped found Moked and the Left Camp of Israel. He returned to Mapam in 1980.

He entered the Knesset in 1981 and led Mapam from 1988, later helping form Meretz. From 1992 to 1996 he was Minister of Immigrant Absorption under Yitzhak Rabin. He worked against religious coercion and for equal status for the Reform and Conservative movements.

From 1996 he chaired the board of Meitar College in Jerusalem. He led a project for an encyclopedia of Jewish culture, published in Hebrew in 2007.