[4] A fellow classmate, Shulamit Laskov, remembers him as the "shining star" of the grade level.

He was “an especially tall young man, a little pudgy, whose goodness of heart was splashed across his smiling face.” He excelled in all areas, “even in drawing and in gymnastics, where he was no slouch.

Shortly afterwards, in March 1948, his brother Aharon, who decades later was one of the victims of the Lod Airport Massacre, was appointed director of a research unit, HEMED, in Mandatory Palestine involving biological warfare.

[6] In May Ben-Gurion appointed Ephraim to replace his brother as director of the HEMED research unit, given his success abroad in procuring biological warfare materials and equipment to produce them.

He received 66 votes to 41 cast in favour of his opponent Ephraim Urbach and he assumed office on 24 May 1973.

He was involved in the dispute between Mexico (where the resolution was initially promoted during the World Conference on Women, 1975) and the US Jewish community because of a touristic boycott directed from the latter to that country.

[10] In November 1977, he hosted President Anwar Sadat of Egypt in the first ever official visit of an Arab head of state.

In 1978, he declined to stand for a second term due to his wife's illness,[9] and was succeeded by Yitzhak Navon.