1875 - 1962
Religious Zionist leader, author, and first Israeli minister of religious affairs.
Yehudah Leib Hacohen Maimon was born in Markuleshti, Bessarabia, Russia. His parents supported the Lovers of Zion (Horevei Zion; also Hibbat Zion) movement and he was exposed to classic religious Zionist writing from an early age. He studied in the yeshivas (Jewish religious schools) of Lithuania, developing extensive ties with other religious Zionists. One of his associations was with Rabbi Isaac Jacob Reines, founder of the Mizrahi party within the World Zionist Organization, and Maimon rose to leadership there. He immigrated to Palestine in 1913, was arrested and imprisoned, then expelled by the Turks in 1915. He returned to Palestine in 1919, by permission of the British, after spending some years in the United States.
Along with Rabbi A. I. Kook, Maimon established the chief rabbinate in Palestine. In 1935, he was elected Mizrahi representative to the executive of the Jewish Agency. Maimon then founded the Mossad Harav Kook educational institute and publishing house, where he edited the periodical Sinai. As Israel's first minister of religious affairs, 1948 - 1951, he set policy regarding a number of major public religious issues. Maimon also authored many books on religious Zionism and major rabbinic figures.
— CHAIM I. WAXMAN
