President Yitzhak Ben-Zvi

After Weizmann's death and Albert Einstein's refusal of the office, the Knesset elected Yitzhak Ben-Zvi the second President of Israel in December 1952. Born in Poltava in 1884, he had come to the Land of Israel in 1907, co-founded the Bar Giora and Hashomer defence groups, built the labour movement with Ben-Gurion and headed the Jewish National Council (Va'ad Leumi) under the British Mandate. His son Eli fell in the War of Independence in 1948.

Ben-Zvi was the first president to live in Jerusalem, and he received guests in a modest wooden hut beside his home in Rehavia, a sign of the simple style he brought to the office. A historian of the Jewish communities of the East, the Samaritans and the Karaites, and founder of the institute that bears his name, he opened the residence to immigrants from every exile. Re-elected in 1957 and 1962, he is the only president elected three times and the longest-serving, holding office until his death on 23 April 1963.