ẒADOK (Wilkenfeld), ḤAIM JOSEPH

ẒADOK (Wilkenfeld), ḤAIM JOSEPH (1913–2002), Israeli attorney and politician, member of the Third to Ninth Knessets. Ẓadok was born in Rava-Roska in Poland. He attended a Polish gymnasium in Rava-Roska, and later studied philosophy and Jewish Studies at Warsaw University. He was a member of the Gordonia Movement in Poland, and of the Hitaḥadut-Po'alei Zion party. Ẓadok immigrated to Palestine in 1935 and received a law degree from the Government Law School in Jerusalem. He served with the *Haganah and Jewish supernumerary police until 1945, and as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces during the War of Independence. In the first Israeli government formed in 1949 he was appointed deputy attorney general, and in 1952 opened a private law practice, in which he remained until 1974, with an intermission in 1965–6.

Ẓadok was first elected to the Third Knesset in 1955 on the Mapai list. In the Fourth and Fifth Knessets he served as chairman of the Knesset House Committee, and in the Seventh and Eighth Knessets as chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee. He served as minister of commerce and industry in the course of the Sixth Knesset, from 1965 to 1966, resigning in November due to differences of opinion with Minister of Finance Pinhas *Sapir. He was appointed minister of justice in the government formed by Yitzhak Rabin in June 1974, serving for a period also as minister for religious affairs. Ẓadok was elected to the Ninth Knesset in 1977, but resigned in January 1978, returning to his private law practice but continuing to be active in the Israel Labor Party and in various public activities.

From 1964 to 1974 Ẓadok served as chairman of the Executive Committee of the Hebrew University, and from 1978 to 1980 he lectured there.

In 1971 he wrote, with Avraham Ben-Naftali, Sidrei Shilton u-Mishpat ("Government and Justice Procedures," 1971), and in 1978 he published Sugyot ba-Mimshal be-Yisrael ("Government Issues in Israel").

[Susan Hattis Rolef (2^nd ed.)]