Natan Sharansky

Natan Sharansky
Natan Sharansky, February 2016
Date of birth	(1948-01-20) 20 January 1948 (age 69)
Place of birth	Stalino, Soviet Union (now Donetsk, Ukraine)
Knessets	14, 15, 16, 17
Faction represented in Knesset
1996–2003	Yisrael BaAliyah
2006	Likud
Ministerial roles
1996–1999	Minister of Industry and Trade
1999–2000	Minister of Internal Affairs
2001–2003	Deputy Prime Minister
2001–2003	Minister of Housing & Construction
2003–2005	Minister of Jerusalem Affairs

Natan Sharansky (Hebrew: נתן שרנסקי‎‎, Russian: Ната́н Щара́нский; born Anatoly Borisovich Shcharansky (Russian: Анато́лий Бори́сович Щара́нский) on 20 January 1948) is an Israeli politician, human rights activist and author who, as a refusenik in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s, spent nine years in Soviet prisons. He has served as Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency since June 2009.

Sharansky was born in Donetsk (then called Stalino), Soviet Union on 20 January 1948 to a Jewish family. He graduated with a degree in applied mathematics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. As a child, he was a chess prodigy. He performed in simultaneous and blindfold displays, usually against adults. At the age of 15, he won the championship in his native Donetsk. When incarcerated in solitary confinement, he claims to have maintained his sanity by playing chess against himself in his mind. Sharansky beat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a simultaneous exhibition in Israel in 1996.

He was given the current name in 1986 by the Israeli ambassador to West Germany, after he was freed from the Soviet incarceration as part of prisoner exchange.

Natan Sharansky is married to Avital Sharansky and has two daughters, Rachel and Hannah. In the Soviet Union, his marriage application to Avital was denied by the authorities. They were married in a friend's apartment, in a ceremony not recognized by the government, as the USSR only recognized civil marriage and not religious marriage.