Choose Yourself a Hebrew Name!

Mordecai Nimtsa-bi

1948

Excerpt from the Order of the Prime Minister and Minister of Defense:

. . . It is recommended that all commanders (from platoon leader to head of staff) change their family names—be they German, Anglo-Saxon, Slavic, French, or any other foreign name—to Hebrew family names, in order to set an example for their troops. The Israel Defense Forces needs…

Please login or register for free access to Posen Library
Register
Already have an account?
Engage with this Source

Creator Bio

Mordecai Nimtsa-bi

1903–1949

Mordecai Nimtsa-bi was born in Pinsk. After studying law in Moscow and Leningrad, he moved to Palestine in 1924 and lived in Haifa. In 1944, he published an official booklet of guidelines for creating Hebrew surnames, directed at new immigrants. In 1948, he became head of the Israel Civil Defense Service. He also published a book discussing strategies for designing the national flag of Israel.

You may also like

Painting of men seated in dark room and one central figure standing.
Tooltip info icon

The Grand Sanhedrin

Édouard Moyse’s painting portrays the Grand Sanhedrin, the Jewish high court assembled by Napoleon in 1807 to ratify the answers of an assembly of Jewish communal leaders to twelve questions submitted…
View Source

A Joyful Mother of Children

I entitled this volume Em Habanim Semeḥah [Psalms 113:9], based on the Jerusalem tractate of Berakhot (toward the close of the second chapter) which portrays Erets Yisrael as the mother of Israel and…
View Source

Ash on a Young Man’s Sleeve

When breakfast was over, I had to go to the synagogue, rain or shine, for it was Saturday morning. I used to sit next to Bernard and Simon. We would wear our skull caps and whisper to each other…
View Source