Yigal Hurvitz was very successful in turning a small family farm into a thriving dairy and meat concern with offshoots in the United States and Latin America.
His short-lived career as finance minister was far less spectacular, causing his resignation Sunday from Prime Minister Menachem Begin's cabinet and what may mean the government's downfall.
Given Israel's deep-rooted economic troubles and political eccentricities, Hurvitz, a cousin of Moshe Dayan, nevertheless deserves credit for taking on the thankless job of trying.
Born in what was then Palestine, Hurvitz, 61, had little formal education and comes across as a colorless individual. 'He has a vocabulary of 500 words, and uses about 200,' former Foreign Minister Abba Eban once said of him.
Hurvitz's associates say that description does him gross injustice. They describe him as a highly sociable, self-made man, who writes poetry in his spare time.
A hawk who favors Israeli control over the occupied West Bank, Hurvitz joined the Begin cabinet in 1977 as commerce and industry minister but quit in 1978 in protest over the Camp David agreements with Egypt.
He rejoined the cabinet last Oct. 21 as finance minister to tackle Israel's economic problems which he warned could increase the nation's dependence on the United States and curtail the Jewish state's ability to pursue its independent policy in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Hurvitz made his first steps in politics in Mapai, the hardcore component of today's Labor Party. He followed Mapai leader David Ben-Gurion and his Rafi splinter group into the political wilderness, resisting a 1968 agreement that returned Rafi to the Labor fold.
In 1969, Hurvitz set up the 'State List' which together with four other right-wing factions, including Begin's hardcore Herut party, pulled together to form the Likud bloc.
Hurvitz grew up on Nahalal, a collective farm in Israel's Jezriel valley, served in the Jewish Brigade of the British army in World War II, married and bought a poultry and dairy farm of his own at Kfar Warburg, a farming settlement south of Tel Aviv.
He later was elected to head a collective farmers' union, a position he used to catapult himself into industry.
His first independent venture was the purchase of a bankrupt ice cream factory for which he paid one Israeli pound. Within months, he turned the plant into a moneymaker. Other ventures included a plastic cup factory and the purchase of land in occupied Arab territory.
Hurvitz was forced to withdraw from the family business when he joined the Begin cabinet. Two of his sons, Yonathan, 38, and Yair, 33, now run the concern that has expanded to include investments in vegetable farms in Costa Rica and Puerto Rico which export most of their produce to the United States.
The third son, Yoav, 24, looks after the family farm.
Hurvitz's self-professed love, however, has always been politics. Insiders say he is likely to use his newly gained freedom from the day-to-day battle against inflation to set up a new party incorporating other politicians, including Dayan.
