Levannon (Lewannon) Nekhemia ( Nechemia)
(before the change of surname, Levitan; 1915, Ruzhany, Lifland Governorate – 2003, Kibbutz Kfar Blum) — Israeli statesman and public figure.
Nekhemia Levannon was born into the family of Isaak Levitan, director of a small factory and participant in the revolutionary movement (d. 1920). In 1917, with the approach of German troops, the family moved to Perm, and at the end of 1920 — to Petrograd. In 1922, the Levitan family went abroad and settled in Tallinn. Levannon studied at the Jewish community school with instruction in Russian and later at a Jewish gymnasium.
In 1930, he joined the Zionist youth organization Amana, later becoming a member of Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir and He-Halutz; he headed the Tallinn branch of the movement. In 1935, he moved to Latvia, where he led the Riga branch of the Herzliya Zionist youth movement.
In 1938, he made aliyah to Eretz-Israel and joined Kibbutz Afikim. In 1939, he became secretary of the Anglo-Baltic Group, formed in Moshav Binyamina by immigrants from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, England, and the USA. In 1943, this group founded Kibbutz Kfar Blum.
In 1945, Levannon was sent by the Jewish Agency and the organization Netzach–Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa’ir to England to work with Jewish Zionist youth movements and organize aliyah. He was a delegate to the 22nd Zionist Congress in Basel (December 1946). In June 1948, he returned to Israel and lived in Kibbutz Kfar Blum, where he managed the kibbutz economy.
From the creation of Nativ in 1952, he was among its first staff members. That year, he was sent to Stockholm — officially as a diplomatic courier at the Israeli legation, but in fact to study the situation of Jews in the Soviet Union and to develop ways to assist them, including organizing clandestine border crossings through Finland for subsequent aliyah to Israel.
After the restoration of Soviet–Israeli diplomatic relations in July 1953, Levannon worked at the Israeli embassy in Moscow, heading the local Nativ group. He established and maintained contact with Soviet Jews, strengthening their national consciousness. In August 1955, at the demand of Soviet authorities, he was expelled from the USSR.
He then worked in Bar, a division of Nativ that coordinated public campaigns in the free world for the right of Jews in the USSR and Eastern Europe to emigrate to Israel. From 1956 to 1959, he again headed the economy of Kibbutz Kfar Blum; in 1960–61 he led Bar, and in 1965–69 served as its representative in the United States.
From 1969 to 1982, Levannon was head of Nativ, playing a major role in the struggle for the mass aliyah of Soviet Jews. From 1982, he lived and worked in Kibbutz Kfar Blum, where he remained for the rest of his life.
He was the author of two memoirs:
– Ha-Kod Nativ (“Code Name — Nativ”, Tel Aviv, 1995)
– Ha-Derekh al Khof ha-Yarden (“The Road to the Bank of the Jordan”, Kibbutz Dalia, 1999).