Yitzhak Navon, former Israeli president and education minister from Labor Party, dead at 94

Published November 07, 2015

FILE - This March 11, 1979 file photo shows the then Presidents of the United State Jimmy Carter, left, and of Israel Yitzhak Navon during a meeting in Jerusalem. Navon, who served as Israel's fifth president, has died Saturday, Nov. 7, 2015, his family said. He was 94. (AP Photo/Shlomo Arad, File) (The Associated Press)

Yitzhak Navon, who served as Israel's fifth president, has died. He was 94.

His family said he died Saturday.

Navon was a top aide to Israel's founding father David Ben-Gurion. Later he embarked on a political career in the Labor Party. He served as president between 1978 and 1983 and had a lengthy term as education minister. He quit politics in 1992 and became a successful author and playwright.

Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog remembered Navon as a member of Israel's founding generation who "built our national home with their own hands." Centrist Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid called him a "moderating, embracing, respecting voice that is so missing these days."

Navon was born in Jerusalem to a Sephardi family descended from Spanish Jews expelled in the inquisition of 1492.

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