Yehudit Simhonit

Yehudit Simhonit (sometimes Simhoni;[note 1] Hebrew: יהודית שמחונית‎; 24 January 1902 – 5 December 1991) was a Zionist activist and politician.

Yehudit Simhonit
Date of birth(1902-01-24)24 January 1902
Place of birthNahar-Tov, Russian Empire
Year of aliyah1921
Date of death5 December 1991(1991-12-05) (aged 89)
Knessets1
Faction represented in Knesset
1949–1951Mapai

Biography

Simhonit was born in Nahar-Tov, an agricultural settlement in the Kherson Oblast of the Russian Empire (today in Ukraine), and attended an agricultural high school. In 1917 she joined the Zionist Student Youth Federation.

In 1921 she and her husband Mordechai Simhoni made aliyah to Mandatory Palestine, and settled in Nahalal, the newly established first moshav. In 1927 she became a member of the Union of Women Workers. She moved to kibbutz Tel Yosef in 1931, and moved again to Geva in 1943. A member of Mapai, she represented the party in the fourth Assembly of Representatives.

In 1949 she was elected to the first Knesset on the Mapai list. However, she resigned from the Knesset on 5 February 1951 and was replaced by Herzl Berger.[1]

She later worked as a member of the Histadrut's co-ordinating committee and chief cultural and welfare officer of the IDF's Women's Corps. Between 1960 and 1965 she served as head of the Histadrut's International Relations Department.

In 1965 she left Mapai and was a founding member of David Ben-Gurion's new Rafi party, and was amongst its leadership until the party was dissolved in 1968. She died in 1991.

Her son, Major General Asaf Simhoni, was killed in a plane crash at the end of the Sinai War. Her grandson, Avner Simhoni, was killed in 1968 when a mine exploded in the Gulf of Suez during the military operations in the War of Attrition.[2]

Note
  1. Her actual surname is "Simhoni"; however it was customary for Russian speakers to add a "t" (Hebrew: "ת"‎) suffix to surnames of women

References
  1. Knesset Members in the First Knesset Knesset website
  2. "סמל שמחוני, אבנר". Izkor; The State of Israel, Ministry of Defense. Retrieved 28 January 2014.
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