Yehudah Lerner

Yehudah Lerner was born in 1930 in Gedera

Yehudah Lerner was born in Gedera to Mordechai and Rina. As a young man he was a counselor and coordinator in the Maccabi Tzair youth movement. From age 14 he belonged to the Haganah, where he took a squad commanders course with Ariel Sharon, and he also served in the Jewish Settlement Police.

In 1947 the Haganah sent him to receive the immigrant ship Shabtai Lozinski. The operation failed, and he was deported to the detention camps in Cyprus, where he stayed 3 weeks. In 1948 he studied at the Beit HaKerem teachers seminary in Jerusalem, was a Gadna instructor and took part in the fighting for Jerusalem.

After the war he became a teacher at the Yehiel Michel Pines school in Gedera and later headed a school in Gan Yavne. He was active in water associations and local agriculture, and was a member of the Likud Central Committee.

In the 1973 local elections he was chosen to head the Gedera council for the Lema'an Gedera faction. He set up a rotation agreement with two other faction leaders, but left office after about a year because the agreement was not kept.

He then ran a school in Gderot for 1 year and a school in Kiryat Ekron for about 10 years. In 1985 he and his wife Nira founded Beit Mintz, a museum of the history of Gedera and the Bilu pioneers. He died on 16 May 2011 and was buried in Gedera.