Blessed is the True Judge: Former MK Yehuda Ben Meir Has Passed Away

Blessed is the True Judge. At the age of 86, former Knesset member Yehuda Yaakov Ben-Meir, who served as a member of the National Religious Party in the seventies and eighties, has passed away.

Ben Meir was born in New York as Yehuda Rosenberg, and his family immigrated to Israel. His father, Israel, was one of the leaders of the Mizrachi movement, and the son followed in his footsteps. In the 1960s, he joined the party that became the National Religious Party (NRP) and served as the chairman of the Youth Bureau and later as a member of the party's central committee and chairman of the party management.

He was first elected to the Knesset in 1971 and served continuously until 1984. In 1981, he was appointed Deputy Foreign Minister under Yitzhak Shamir. He left HaMizrachi together with Zevulun Hammer and returned to it after a short time. The Youth faction of Hammer and Ben Meir supported the settler movement, but in the 1988 elections, Ben Meir shifted to the left and was among the founders of the more left-leaning Meimad movement.

After retiring from the Knesset, he served as a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.