Prof. Shlomo Mor-Yosef, who served from 2017 to 2021 as the director-general of Population and Immigration Authority, has been appointed head of the board of directors of Leumit Health Care Services.
Jerusalem-born Mor-Yosef, 71, was previously the director-general of the National Insurance Institute between the years 2012-2016 and, prior to that, between the years 2008-2014, chairman of the board of the Israel National Institute for Health Policy Research.
A 1980 graduate of the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Mor-Yosef, with brief intervals, spent a total of 38 years there, climaxing with an 11-year term as director-general of the Hadassah Medical Organization (HMO) in Jerusalem.
Specializing in obstetrics and gynecology at Hadassah, Mor-Yosef, before his promotion to director-general, served as a senior physician in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Hadassah, with a special focus on cervical cancer. From 1988-1989, he completed a subspecialty in gynecological oncology at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Gateshead, England.
In 1990, Mor-Yosef assumed the position of deputy director of the Hadassah-University Medical Center, in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem, following which he studied at the Harvard University JFK School of Government, where he received his master’s in public administration. In 1994, he assumed the post of deputy director-general of HMO and then served as director of Hadassah, Ein Kerem. Prior to that, Mor-Yosef served as director-general of Soroka-University Medical Center, Beersheba.
■ THE JERUSALEM-HEADQUARTERED Israel Democracy Institute this week announced the appointment of Prof. Suzie Navot as vice president of research, where she will join IDI president Yohanan Plesner, vice president of research Prof. Karnit Flug and vice president of strategy Dr. Jesse Ferris on IDI’s management team.
In her new capacity, Navot will replace Prof. Yuval Shany and oversee the institute’s Center for Democratic Values and Institutions, the Center for Security and Democracy, and the Center for Religion, Nation and State. Shany will remain a senior fellow after completing a successful four-year term as vice president.
Navot is a full professor of constitutional and parliamentary law and, prior to her appointment, was a member of the faculty of the Striks School of Law at the College of Management Academic Studies. She earned a bachelor’s degree in law from Tel Aviv University, an MA in public policy from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Tel Aviv University, and holds a doctorate in law from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has taught at the Sorbonne in Paris and at the National Security College, and has served on several public committees.
She was also a candidate for the Supreme Court. Her knowledge and legal opinions are so highly valued that she is frequently called on by media outlets to clarify complicated legal issues for the general public.
Last September, two months after leaving office, former president Reuven Rivlin joined IDI as its honorary chairman.
■ AMONG THE American leaders of Jewish organizations who came to Jerusalem to participate in this week’s Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations was Naomi Adler, the new CEO of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, who was delighted to meet US Ambassador Tom Nides, who was among the speakers at the conference. Nides told her that his mother was passionate about Hadassah.
Several of the people attending the conference are staying on for next week’s meeting of the Jewish Agency Board of Governors, which is also traditionally held in Jerusalem, and may finally result in a new chairman or chairwoman.
■ LAST APRIL, Rabbi Yisroel Goldberg, the director of Chabad of Rehavia, was rushed to Shaare Zedek Medical Center because of a painful burning sensation in his eyes. Goldberg had accidentally rubbed his eyes after his hands had made contact with a toxic substance that someone had sprayed on the door of the Chabad building – one of 35 Chabad facilities in the capital. Security cameras showed an unknown man spraying the door, and police subsequently mounted an investigation.
Goldberg has launched a campaign to write a Torah scroll in memory of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the final letters of which will be inscribed on Wednesday, March 2, at 4 p.m., in the plaza of the Great Synagogue, which is two doors away from Chabad of Rehavia. At 6 p.m. there will be a Hakafot Parade and dancing, culminating in a seudat mitzvah further down the road at Yeshurun Central Synagogue.
■ WITH HIS family having been directly and indirectly involved in so much of the history of the State of Israel, it is extremely difficult for President Isaac Herzog to refrain from relating to various religious, military, diplomatic, legal, political, environmental, health, philanthropic, artistic and even sporting events without recalling his grandfather, grandmother, father, mother, uncles, aunts, siblings and some of his cousins. One of his cousins, a legal expert working in academia who has the same name as the president, has said of him more than once that he is the one who keeps the family history alive.
Indeed, that proved to be so last week when the president and his wife, Michal, toured the remodeled museum at Heichal Shlomo, adjacent to the Great Synagogue. Heichal Shlomo was formerly the seat of the Chief Rabbinate, and it goes without saying that museum director Shlomit Sabag; Dr. Ezra Kahalani, dean of Herzog College – today the main occupant and administrator of Heichal Shlomo; and Rabbi Baruch Gigi, who coheads Yeshivat Har Etzion and sits on the directorates of Heichal Shlomo and Herzog College, were only too thrilled to lead the Herzogs. Where? To the study of the president’s grandfather, who was the first chief rabbi of the State of Israel.
The inauguration of the remodeled museum was dedicated to the late Moshe Moskowitz, fondly known as Moshko, who died a year ago and had been the longtime director of the Heichal Shlomo Foundation, in addition to being one of the founders of Yeshivat Har Etzion.
Rabbi Meir Nehorai, the chief rabbi of Kibbutz Masuot Yitzhak, who has served in recent years as head of the Heichal Shlomo Foundation, spoke about continuing Moshko’s work, and how both Moshko and Rabbi Herzog, who had spent time together at Masuot Yitzhak, had been able to combine their community work and unceasing commitment to the well-being of the Jewish people with Torah study, particularly during the period of the Holocaust.
Nehorai spoke of Rabbi Herzog’s efforts to persuade world leaders to take action to rescue Jews in Europe, and of Moshko’s efforts many years later to find Torah scrolls that had been saved from the ruins of synagogues destroyed by the Nazis, and, stained with Jewish blood. Moshko had brought such scrolls to the museum as part of the testimony to this dark chapter in Jewish history.
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