Yehuda Leib Maimon

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Yehuda Leib Maimon

Date of birth	11 December 1875
Year of Aliyah	1913
Date of death	10 July 1962
Knesset(s)	1st
Party	United Religious Front
Gov't roles (current in bold)	Minister of Religions & War Victims

Yehuda Leib Maimon (Hebrew: יהודה לייב מימון‎, born Yehuda Leib Fishman 11 December 1875, died 10 July 1962, also known as Yehuda Leib Hacohen Maimon) was an Israeli politician and leader of the religious Zionism movement

[edit] Biography

Born in Bessarabia in 1875, Maimon studied in a yeshiva and was one of the founders of the Mizrachi movement in 1902. By this time Maimon had moved to the Russian Empire, where he was arrested several times for Zionist activity. He was a delegate to the ninth Zionist Congress in 1909, and attended every one until Israeli independence in 1948.

In 1913 Maimon moved to Palestine (then part of the Ottoman Empire, but was expelled during the First World War. He moved to the United States, where he organised the Mizrachi movement. After returning to Mandate Palestine (now under British control) in 1919, Maimon became leader of Mizrachi in the country and together with Abraham Isaac Kook he helped establish the Chief Rabbinate. He was elected to the board of the Jewish Agency in 1935, but was imprisoned by the British in Latrun in 1946.

Maimon helped draft Israel's declaration of independence, and was one of the people to sign it. He was appointed Minister of Religions and War Victims in the provisional government set up immediately after independence. He was elected to the first Knesset in 1949 as a member of the United Religious Front (an alliance of Agudat Israel, Agudat Israel Workers, Mizrachi and Hapoel HaMizrachi) and retained his ministerial role in the first and second governments. He lost his seat in the 1951 elections.