Yuri Stern

Yuri Stern was born in 1949 in Moscow

Stern was born in Moscow in 1949 to Esther and Leibish Stern, both engineers. His grandfather, Dr. Yosef Kaminsky, was a Zionist activist in Russia who was sent to a Soviet camp in 1934 and executed there in 1938.

He studied economics at Moscow University and earned a doctorate there, with a thesis on economic models. He met his wife Lena in 1968, and they married in 1970. He did economic research at the university until he left the Soviet Union.

Stern campaigned for the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate. After a document he helped prepare on their situation was published in the West in 1981, his family was allowed to leave, and they moved to Israel. There he founded an information center on Soviet Jewry and, with Natan Sharansky, an office that became the basis of the Zionist Forum in 1988.

He entered the Knesset in 1996 with Yisrael BaAliyah, then formed the Aliyah party with Michael Nudelman, which joined Yisrael Beiteinu. He was Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Office under Ariel Sharon in 2001 and 2002. He chaired the Internal Affairs and Environment Committee and the State Control Committee, and founded the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus in 2004.

Stern died of cancer on January 16, 2007. A center for cancer patients and an annual arts prize carry his name, and a street in Jerusalem was named after him.