Shlomo Levi

Shlomo Levi was born in 1934 and began his football career at Maccabi Tel Aviv, where he struggled to secure a regular place in the starting lineup.[1] In 1955 he moved for one season to Hakoah Tel Aviv in the second division.[1] Maccabi Haifa coach Eli Fox subsequently brought him to Maccabi Haifa, where he spent three years before a one-year waiting period preceded his transfer to Hapoel Haifa, then managed by Yugoslavian coach Zlatko Čajkovski.[1]

At the end of the 1962 season, Levi accepted an offer from Hapoel Ramat Gan — then competing in the second division under coach Dovid Schweizer.[1] Playing alongside goalkeeper Yaakov Hodorov, Levi scored 31 goals and was renowned as a specialist in bicycle kicks, propelling the club into the top division.[1] He earlier won Israel's top-scoring title in 1961 jointly with Zecharia Ratzabi, finishing that season with 15 goals, and shared the title again the following year with Yitzhak Nizri of Hapoel Tiberias after scoring 16 goals.[1]

In 1964 Levi led Hapoel Ramat Gan to the club's historic and only league championship.[1] The title was clinched in the final round with a 1–0 victory over Maccabi Haifa at the Michtash, with Moshe Perel scoring the only goal.[4] Levi left Israel after the 1965 season and played in a semi-professional league in the United States for three years, then returned to Israel and joined a family business.[1]

For the national team, Levi made 14 appearances and scored six goals.[1] One of his most celebrated performances came on 27 November 1960 at Ramat Gan Stadium, in a World Cup qualifying return match against Cyprus attended by approximately 45,000 spectators.[5] Having been moved into his natural position near the opposing penalty area — after reportedly being among Israel's weaker performers in the first match in Nicosia — he scored in the 14th minute, added a bicycle kick in the 30th minute, and completed a hat trick with an assist from Nahum Stellmach.[5] Israel won 6–1, its first-ever victory in World Cup qualifying.[5] Contemporary match coverage quoted Yehuda Gabai describing Levi as "one of the weakest in Nicosia" who, once repositioned, "felt like an experienced cook beside a pot of meat."[5] Under national coach Yosef Mirimovich, Levi was part of the squad that won the 1964 Asian Championship in Israel, including a 2–1 victory over South Korea.[1] He died in 2003 at the age of 69 as a result of illness.[1]

Shlomo Levi was born on April 22, 1922, in Alexandria, Egypt, to Mazal and Rafael Levi.[2] He completed his higher education in Alexandria and became the owner and manager of a textile factory. In addition to Arabic, he spoke Hebrew, French, English, Greek, and Ladino.[2]

In the early 1950s, Levi became active in the Betar Zionist movement in Egypt.[2] He eventually left management of the factory to his brother and traveled internationally to organize Zionist activity, spending approximately six years in Athens, where he engaged in Zionist work and activity for Israel's security establishment while also working as a building contractor.[2] In 1959 he was caught conducting security-related activity and had to leave Athens urgently, arriving in Haifa in March of that year.[2] He initially lived with his parents in a tent at the immigrant transit camp in Yavne.[2]

Levi met Juliet Surani in Israel, married her on June 13, 1963, and settled in Pardes Katz.[2] He adopted her two children, Ezra and Yaffa, and the couple had two daughters, Mazal and Nira.[2] After the 1967 Six-Day War, Levi began conducting business in Gaza, first selling household goods and paint, then solar water heaters.[2] In early 1968 he and a partner rented a shop on Manshiya Street in Gaza and established an agency marketing bamboo and wicker furniture from Gaza to Israel, eventually becoming a principal supplier of raw materials for Gaza's wicker industry.[2]

On October 29, 1969, two terrorists armed with a pistol and a submachine gun entered Levi's wicker-goods shop in central Gaza.[2] They robbed several thousand pounds from the cash register, left the Palestinian employee unharmed, and shot and killed Levi.[2] An investigation found that the attackers had been searching for him since that morning and that people in the street had cooperated with them.[2] Levi was 47 years old at the time of his murder. He was survived by his wife and four children: Ezra, aged 11; Yaffa, aged 9; Mazal, aged 5; and Nira, who had turned one on the day of his murder.[2] He was buried at the Yavne cemetery and is commemorated on a memorial at Mount Herzl.[2]

A biographical directory contains an entry for Shlomo Levi-Lev Ami.[6] In December 1943, when Menachem Begin assumed command of the Irgun in Eretz Israel, he established a new General Headquarters comprising Aryeh Ben Eliezer, Eliyahu Lankin, and Shlomo Levi-Lev Ami.[3] Levi was the only member of the new headquarters who had also served on the previous command.[3] At its first meeting, the headquarters resolved that the Irgun should launch an armed struggle against the British Mandatory government without delay and detach itself from the Revisionist party.[3]

A separate history refers to a "Shlomo Levi" among dissidents turned over to the British during the 1944 conflict between the Jewish Agency and underground movements.[7] It says that this man escaped, was recaptured, and returned to Palestine several weeks after Yaacov Meridor; because the account uses only the unqualified name, it does not establish that he was Levi-Lev Ami.[7] The available sources do not provide Levi-Lev Ami's birth or death dates, education, or full organizational career.[3][7]

Several additional individuals bearing the name Shlomo Levi appear in Israeli and Jewish documentary sources, though the available records are fragmentary. A Sefaria biographical index identifies a Rav Shlomo Levy as the rosh kollel of Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shevut, Israel, without providing dates or further biographical detail.[8] The National Library of Israel catalog attributes a 62-page Hebrew volume on jet engines — מנועי סילון — to a Shlomo Levi described as an engineer; the book was published in 1988 in Holon by the Holon Center for Technological Education in cooperation with Israel's Ministry of Education and Culture, and its content includes principles of thermodynamics.[9] A separate National Library manuscript record records that the entire Hebrew manuscript יסוד הנקוד (שער הדגש, יסוד לא), held as Zürich Central Library manuscript Ms. Heid. 32 and dated broadly to the eighteenth–nineteenth centuries, was written by a scribe named Shlomo Levi associated with Amsterdam.[10]

A JewishGen local-history biography documents a related but distinct figure, Shlomo Levkovitz Lavi, who was born in Plonsk on October 6, 1884, and died in Israel on July 23, 1963.[11] He is described as having helped develop the concept of the communal "large group" that became the kibbutz movement, was among the founders of Ein Harod, served in the Haganah, enlisted in the British Army at age 60 during World War II, attended the 17th, 18th, and 19th Zionist Congresses, served in the First and Second Knessets, was a candidate for Israel's third presidency, and authored several books.[11] His name and biography are distinct from the other individuals listed here.

The name Shlomo Levi is common across different Jewish communities and historical periods. The sources collected under this entry refer to individuals who cannot be confirmed as the same person: a rabbinic educator, an engineer-author, a manuscript scribe, an Irgun headquarters member, an Egyptian-born Zionist activist murdered in Gaza, and a professional footballer. Readers and researchers should consult primary sources carefully and treat the records in this article as pertaining to separate individuals unless independent evidence of identity is established.