Home, family and remembrance
Mordechai was Sarah’s younger brother and the elder brother of Shlomo Gazit. He married Rina, née Zalbansky (זלבנסקי), who became Rina Gazit. They had two children: their eldest, Avner, and their daughter, Orna. Both went on to build families of their own, a source of pride and a living continuation of the family’s story across generations.
His brother Shlomo, an IDF major general, served as head of Military Intelligence and later as president of Ben-Gurion University and director-general of the Jewish Agency. The brothers followed different paths of public service.[J3]
The family remembers that Mordechai lived for an extended period in Jerusalem’s Wolfson neighbourhood, near the Knesset. His grandson Dan-Eyal also recalls his personal friendship with Teddy Kollek. Their connection belongs to the human story of his life in the city, alongside their public work.
His work with Teddy Kollek on Jerusalem →Alongside its joys, the family also carried profound grief. As the family recalls, on 5 June 1967, the first day of the Six-Day War, Mordechai learned through his official duties, as events unfolded, that his nephew Dan Engel, Sarah’s son, had been killed. An Israeli Air Force pilot, Dan fell over Egypt during the attack on Inshas airfield, aged 22. His burial place remains unknown; a memorial stone stands on Mount Herzl. For Mordechai, public responsibility and personal loss met on that day. Dan’s memory remains inseparable from the family’s story.
Read about Dan (Dani) Arel Engel on Yizkor (Hebrew) ↗Family details, the Jerusalem home, the friendship with Teddy Kollek and the memory of receiving the news were supplied by Dan-Eyal Gazit. The circumstances of Dan’s death were checked against his official Yizkor memorial page.
Moments from the family album
Mordechai and Rina, the brothers across the years, and moments alongside the leaders he worked with. Photographs supplied by Dan-Eyal Gazit, with identifications from the family.
January 1949: Mordechai, Rina and Shlomo
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Download AI-restored versionMordechai and Rina
The brothers in their later years
At a reception, with Moshe Dayan
At an official dinner, with Shimon Peres
Friendship, beyond the diplomatic table
In a 1981 interview, former US ambassador to Israel Walworth Barbour called Gazit “a very good friend of mine”. He recalled dinner at Gazit’s home, where they revisited Barbour’s old diplomatic telegrams as part of Gazit’s book research. His amused recollection preserves a moment of friendship and shared curiosity.[J2]
Explore the sources and reading notes (1)
- [J2] Walworth Barbour — Oral history interview ↗
JFK Library, Sheldon M. Stern, 22 May 1981, transcript pp. 22–23. The dinner’s precise date and location are unspecified.
Through his grandson’s eyes
Three siblings, one family story
Sarah, Mordechai and Shlomo belong to a shared family story, remembered by Dan-Eyal Gazit with love and pride. Alongside the public record, he describes the longing for conversations that can no longer take place.
My grandfather died before I had managed to hear from him everything I wanted to hear: the whole story, all the moving details, every moment of deliberation, drama and decision.
For his grandson, the search for documents, photographs and recordings is a way to preserve fragments of those unfinished stories and pass them on within the family and beyond. Each discovery offers another glimpse of the person behind the public roles.
Their life stories are intertwined with the history of the State of Israel.
Dan-Eyal also shares that he was named in part for the pilot Dan Engel, Sarah’s son and Mordechai’s nephew. The remembrance thus continues within his own name, connecting generations of the family.
The family’s original Hebrew text, translated into English.
To mark Grandpa Motke’s hundredth birthday — had he been alive, he would have celebrated this moving occasion on 5 September — I managed to find a few more precious seconds of him on video, from among his various public activities.
In the photograph accompanying the post, you can see him smiling (!), sitting — as Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office — immediately to the left of Yitzhak Rabin (by then already Prime Minister, during his first term), in a discussion with the Dutch Foreign Minister.
These are a few more small pieces of history, from my grandfather’s generation of giants, and above all from Grandpa himself. How sad that he is no longer with us to share and tell us about the full richness and variety of his significant contribution to the State of Israel, and the many roles he was privileged to fill in his lifetime.
If only he were still here, for one last embrace, with love and appreciation from us all.
Translated excerpts from the original Hebrew post supplied to the website by Dan-Eyal Gazit. Links to the films and details of the documentation are collected under “His voice and presence”.
A promise to the next generation
In his farewell to his grandfather, Dan-Eyal remembered a truthful, kind and hardworking man. Alongside his pride in Mordechai’s public service, he wrote about love, missed conversations and the wish to pass his story on.
I can promise you that your great-grandchildren will know who you were and what you did, and will be so proud of you, just as I am proud of you, and will remember you, as I will always remember you. Rest in peace.