Nehemiah Levanon (; March 23, 1915 – September 2, 2003) was an Israeli intelligence agent, diplomat, head of the aliyah program Nativ, and a founder of kibbutz Kfar Blum. Originally a native of Latvia, he immigrated to the Mandatory Palestine in 1938. After Israel's independence in 1948, Levanon served in a variety of roles to encourage the well-being and emigration of Soviet Jewry. Due to the covert nature of his work, Levanon's decades of service were largely unknown until after his retirement, during the last days of the Soviet Union. Early life Niuma Levitan was born in 1915 in Rujiena, Latvia, to Yosef and Bertha Ilion Levitan. Yosef, a candy factory manager, was a native of Šiauliai, Lithuania and a communist revolutionary who fled to Russia during the Russian Revolution; he died during the course of the Russian Civil War. In response to the invasion of Latvia by Germany during World War I, Niuma's sister, mother, grandmother, and other relatives moved to Perm, Russia, and later to Petrograd. They relocated in 1922 to Tallinn, Estonia (where one of Levitan's aunts lived) with assistance from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, while his grandmother was arranged to sail to America. Levitan became active in the Tallinn Jewish community by singing in the Jewish choir and participating in Jewish youth groups. He became inspired by a member of Hashomer Hatzair to join the Labor Zionist movement. In 1931, Levitan established a chapter of the socialist Zionist youth movement Netzach, a Hebrew acronym for "Pioneer Zionist Youth." He was active for several years with Netzach, assuming leadership of the Estonian branch in 1933 and the Latvian branch—the movement's largest—by 1937. For part of this time, he received agricultural training and lived on a communal farm near Tallinn. In 1937, Levitan began making his way to Palestine. He stopped briefly in Vienna to assist local Netzach leaders. Aliyah Levitan arrived in Palestine in February 1938 and joined the kibbutz Afikim, near the Sea of Galilee. He and other immigrants (together known as the "Anglo-Baltic kibbutz" due to their lands of birth) moved to the town of Binyamina later that year. A number of the town's agricultural workers were Arabs who quit work or were fired as a result of the Arab rioting happening across Palestine. A contingent of the Anglo-Baltic group settled in the Hula Valley in 1941 to work lands owned by the