[1] Remez was born David Drabkin in the village of Kopys in the Russian Empire (now in Belarus) in 1886.

[2] After attending high school he studied law in Turkey before starting work as a teacher.

[2] He moved to Ottoman Palestine in 1913, and worked as an agricultural laborer in Ben Shemen, Be'er Tuvia, Karkur and Zikhron Ya'akov.

[3] He became involved in politics and trade unionism soon after the Mandate era began, serving as Director of the Public Works Office of the Histadrut and Solel Boneh from 1921 to 1929 as well as on Tel Aviv's city council from 1921 to 1925,[2] and was a founding member of David Ben-Gurion's Mapai party.

[2] When the first government collapsed in November 1950, Remez became Education Minister taking over from Zalman Shazar.