1. Yitzhak Rachamim Navon was an Israeli politician, diplomat, playwright, and author.
24 Facts About Yitzhak Navon
1. 2.
Yitzhak Navon served as the fifth President of Israel between 1978 and 1983 as a member of the centre-left Alignment party.
3.
Yitzhak Navon was the first Israeli president born in Jerusalem and the first Sephardi Jew to serve in that office.
4.
In 1924, the Yitzhak Navon family moved from Jaffa Road to the Ohel Moshe neighbourhood in Nachlaot.
5.
Yitzhak Navon attended the Doresh Tziyon and Takhemoni elementary schools and the Hebrew University high school.
6.
Yitzhak Navon studied Arabic and Islamic studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
7.
Yitzhak Navon was fluent in Arabic, Hebrew, Ladino, French and English.
8.
Yitzhak Navon was a member of the Haganah's Arab Intelligence Unit and worked undercover in Jerusalem.
9.
Yitzhak Navon was married to Ofira Yitzhak Navon nee Resnikov, who died of cancer in 1993.
10.
Yitzhak Navon died in Jerusalem at the age of 94 on 6 November, 2015.
11.
In 1951, Yitzhak Navon became the political secretary of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.
12.
Yitzhak Navon remained in this position under Prime Minister Moshe Sharett.
13.
Yitzhak Navon's judgment was crucial to advice the government received during the Suez Crisis and Lavon Affair.
14.
In 1963 Ben-Gurion resigned as prime minister and Yitzhak Navon became a civil service department head at the Ministry of Education and Culture.
15.
Yitzhak Navon ordered the mobilisation of hundreds of female soldiers serving compulsory national service to teach illiterate adults to read and write Hebrew.
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Two years later, Yitzhak Navon was elected to the Knesset as a member of Ben-Gurion's Rafi.
17.
Yitzhak Navon served as deputy speaker of the Knesset and chairman of the Knesset Committee on Foreign and Defense Affairs.
18.
On 19 April 1978, Yitzhak Navon was elected by the Knesset to serve as the fifth President of Israel.
19.
The race was uncontested and Yitzhak Navon received 86 votes in the 120-member Knesset with 23 members casting blank votes.
20.
Yitzhak Navon assumed office on 29 May 1978 and was the first president with small children to move into Beit HaNassi, the presidential residence in Jerusalem.
21.
In 1983, Yitzhak Navon turned down the opportunity to run for a second term of office.
22.
Yitzhak Navon emerged from retirement to chair a Commission of Inquiry on Israeli medical authorities' controversial practice of discarding blood donated by Israelis of Ethiopian origin due to concerns about AIDS transmission.
23.
Yitzhak Navon wrote two musicals based on Sephardic folklore: Romancero Sefardi and Bustan Sefardi, which were successfully performed at Habimah, Israel's national theater in Tel Aviv.
24.
Yitzhak Navon is the author of The Six Days and the Seven Gates, a modern legend of the reunification of Jerusalem, first published in Hebrew by Shikmona Publishing Company and later translated into English.