Ohad Tal

Tal was born on January 4, 1982.[1] He has said that he did not grow up in a religious home and became religious later in life.[8] He served as a tank commander in the Armored Corps.[1]

He earned a bachelor’s degree in educational systems management from Bar-Ilan University and a master’s degree in public administration and policy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[9] A 2022 profile identified him as a resident of Efrat, married to Tamar and the father of four sons.[2]

Tal began his career training and managing educational projects at the Western Wall Heritage Foundation and later directed an Elad project to save Temple Mount remains.[2] He and his family served in the Netherlands, where he worked as an emissary for World Bnei Akiva and the Jewish Agency.[2] His service there included a senior emissary role.[9]

After returning to Israel, Tal established and managed the Religious Zionist Shlichut Center, which brought together ten organizations working to encourage religious-Zionist emissaries to serve Jewish communities abroad.[1][9] He subsequently served as deputy executive director of the Mizrachi movement and secretary-general of World Bnei Akiva.[8]

When his Knesset candidacy was announced in September 2022, World Bnei Akiva said that he would have to leave his director-general position because he had decided to enter electoral politics.[2] The movement emphasized that his political choice was personal and did not affiliate World Bnei Akiva with the Religious Zionist Party.[2]

In September 2022, the Religious Zionist Party announced Tal as its candidate for the twelfth position on its electoral slate, a place selected by party chairman Bezalel Smotrich.[2] The Religious Zionism slate won 14 seats in the election, receiving 516,146 votes, or 10.83 percent of the vote, and Tal entered the Knesset.[10]

In a 2023 interview, Tal argued that his party represented the mainstream of religious Zionism and said that he worked to foster dialogue and cooperation across political divides.[8] In January 2024, he was identified as a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.[11]

By December 2025, Tal was chair of the Religious Zionist Party faction, chair of the Knesset committee for public ventures, and chair of the Knesset caucus for Israel–United States relations.[12] In September 2026, he was again placed twelfth on the final Religious Zionism list after the party reshaped its slate.[13] He said that, despite the personal cost of moving down the list, he supported Smotrich and hoped the changes would broaden the party’s appeal.[13]

The 2026 Religious Zionism-Zehut list combined the nationalist Religious Zionist Party with the libertarian-nationalist Zehut party.[6] Religious Zionism had been formed in 2021 as a successor to the National Union-Tkuma coalition; its joint electoral partnership with Otzma Yehudit and Noam in 2022 later broke up.[6] The combined 2026 list received 290,451 votes, or 5.10 percent, and won six seats.[6] On November 3, 2026, Tal was reported to be among the current members who would not serve in the incoming Knesset, which was due to be sworn in the following week.[7]

Tal helped Smotrich write the Religious Zionist Party’s platform on Diaspora Jewry and aliyah.[3] His proposals included developing Jewish and Zionist curricula in Jewish schools abroad and increasing the number of Israeli teachers serving as emissaries in Jewish day schools.[3] He also proposed considering subsidized English-language high schools in Israel for students from abroad.[3]

Other measures he advocated included state recognition for emissaries, greater support for Israel-based gap-year programs, and assistance for Zionist youth movements in the Diaspora.[3] On immigration, he called for reducing the bureaucratic barriers faced by immigrants seeking recognition of academic degrees and professional licenses.[3]

During a 2022 discussion of Israel–Diaspora relations, Tal said that every Jew should feel at home at the Western Wall.[14] He supported discussions among the different Jewish streams and the ultra-Orthodox to reach an agreement, and said that Israel’s responsibility extended to the whole Jewish people.[14]

On January 2, 2024, Tal and Yisrael Beitenu MK Evgeny Sova co-led a Knesset event on post-war plans for the Gaza Strip, at which Iranian anti-government activist Vahid Behashti spoke.[15] At the gathering, Tal called for a strategic victory rather than a series of tactical victories.[15] He said that the war’s goal should be permanent Israeli control over the entire Gaza Strip and that Gaza should return to Israeli hands.[15]

At a sovereignty conference organized with the Yesha Council that month, Tal argued that the war concerned the Land of Israel and Israel’s continued existence there, rather than only the destruction of buildings in Gaza.[11] In a November 2025 interview, he advocated applying Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and in the Gaza Strip, arguing that this was necessary for peace.[4] He called the 2005 disengagement from Gaza a mistake, supported a return at least to northern Gaza, and maintained that restored Israeli control would stabilize the region.[4]

Tal opposed relying on international forces to disarm Hamas, arguing that only the IDF could accomplish that task.[4] He also discussed promoting legislation to implement recommendations of the Shamgar Commission concerning the consequences of hostage-taking.[4]

In June 2024, Tal supported reviving an earlier bill on yeshiva students’ military service so that the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee could discuss it.[16] He stressed that the vote was procedural and did not itself enact a conscription law.[16] Describing friends and staff who had completed multiple rounds of reserve duty, he cited the substantial personal, family, financial, and mental costs they faced and called it unfair that other parts of the public remained exempt.[16] He advocated changing incentives that kept ultra-Orthodox men out of the IDF and said that the process of increasing enlistment had to begin.[16]

Tal said in November 2025 that he had led a bipartisan Knesset delegation to Taipei that May to strengthen relations with Taiwan.[4] He described Israel and Taiwan as small democracies facing hostile surroundings and advocated cooperation between them.[4]

Knesset travel data cited in December 2025 showed that Tal had spent 68 days abroad that year.[12] In his response, he described meetings with foreign legislators, interviews with international media, and work to promote cooperation in economics, trade, agriculture, and security.[12]

On domestic economic policy, Tal supported opening markets to imports and competition and reducing regulation as means of lowering prices.[4] The Religious Zionism-Zehut list’s broader 2026 program included promoting private enterprise and legalizing marijuana, alongside strengthening security, extending control over Judea and Samaria, and weakening the judiciary; these were list-level policies rather than positions individually attributed to Tal.[6]

Tal’s pre-parliamentary work connected Jewish education in Israel with emissary service and organizational leadership in Diaspora communities.[9][2] His subsequent proposals on schools, youth movements, gap-year programs, and immigration addressed many of the same fields.[3]

At a May 14, 2025 gathering in Jerusalem, attended by 18 foreign ambassadors and broadcast live to supporters of Israel, Tal called on participants to stand with Israel.[5] He described the Jewish people’s return to their land after 2,000 years of exile as breaking “all rules of history, of physics,” and presented that return as having a purpose beyond the Jewish people themselves: “for the sake of humanity, to bring a blessing to the entire world.”[5]

In January 2024, Tal argued that those who had served as prime minister, defense minister, or IDF chief of staff during the preceding decade—including Benjamin Netanyahu—shared responsibility for what he called Israel’s “biggest failure in its history.”[17] He described the existing leadership as part of the problem and predicted political changes after the war, while exempting Smotrich on the grounds that, in Tal’s assessment, he had not helped determine national security policy.[17] Tal also said that the war had demonstrated Israelis’ willingness to give their lives for one another despite their disagreements.[17]

In the debate over the 2026 repeal of the 2021 kashrut reform, Tal argued that the legislation would protect consumers and establish transparent national standards.[18] Supporters cited consistency and reliability, while critics argued that the changes restricted local rabbis’ autonomy and reduced choices for businesses and consumers.[18]

In August 2026, Tal criticized fellow Religious Zionist MK Tzvi Sukkot internally after Sukkot participated in demolishing a monument in a Palestinian village.[19] Tal questioned whether the action had been coordinated with the election campaign, whether it reflected a strategy, or whether the party was effectively committing political suicide.[19]