The Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East

Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (b. Shimshelevich) was the second president of the State of Israel and a longtime Labor Party leader. Born in Poltava, Ukraine, Ben-Zvi moved to Palestine in 1907, first living in Jaffa. He studied law at Istanbul University, along with David Ben-Gurion, and was expelled for political reasons from Palestine from 1914 until 1918. Ben-Zvi became the president of the new State of Israel in 1952, a position he held until the end of his life. As a historian of Mizrahi Judaism, Ben-Zvi also founded Jerusalem’s Institute for the Study of Oriental Jewish Communities in the Middle East, which was renamed the Ben-Zvi Institute in his honor.