President Zalman Shazar

Zalman Shazar, born Shneur Zalman Rubashov in 1889 in Mir, in today's Belarus, to a Chabad family, was a writer, historian and editor of the labour daily Davar; his pen name comes from the initials of his Hebrew name. As Israel's first Minister of Education he passed the Compulsory Education Law of 1949. The Knesset elected him the third president on 21 May 1963 and re-elected him in 1968.

Shazar brought scholarship and Jewish learning into the office, holding regular Bible study circles at the President's residence. He kept close ties with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, whom he visited in New York. He was president through the Six-Day War of 1967 and the reunification of Jerusalem, and in 1971 became the first to live in the new President's Residence (Beit HaNassi) in the Talbiyeh quarter. He served the maximum two terms, ending in May 1973, and died in Jerusalem in 1974.