The body of Dr. Mordecai Eliash, Israel’s Minister to Britain who died here yesterday of a heart attack at the age of 57, will be flown by chartered plane to Israel tonight. Accompanying the body will be Dr. Eliash’s son and daughter and Israel vice-consul Itzhak Vardi. Interrment is expected to take place in Jerusalem tomorrow.
Dr. Eliash, one of the leading Orthodox Zionists, succumbed in a hotel here where he was spending the Sabbath studying the Talmud. Observers said be collapsed immediately after he shut the volume he had been perusing. Dr. Eliash, who had spent the past week visiting leading British officials in the company of Israel’s chief delegate to the United Nations, Aubrey S. Eban, was scheduled to spend the Passover holdidays in Israel. A widower, he leaves a daughter, Rachel, and a son, Moshe.
One of the men credited with helping bring about the establishment of the Jewish state, he was the first Israel diplomatic envoy to speak for his government before the United Nations at Lake Success. Dr. Eliash was born in Russia, and educated at Oxford University. Beginning as a lawyer in London, he went to Palestine in the 1920’s and practiced law there for 30 years. He was a former president of the Jewish Bar Association. When Britain gave Israel de facto recognition, Dr. Eliash returned to London as the first Israeli diplomatic representative there, April 5, 1949. In July his government gave him the official rank of Minister.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
