Yuli Edelstein

Edelstein was born on August 5, 1958, in Chernivtsi, then in the Soviet Union and now in Ukraine; accounts also use the names Chernovitz and Czernowitz for his birthplace.[1][4] His parents, Yuri and Anita, were Jewish and later converted to Christianity, while his early connection to Jewish culture developed principally through his grandparents.[1] His father became a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church in 1979.[5] Edelstein remembered his childhood household as largely disconnected from Judaism, but described the customs preserved by his grandparents as an important starting point for his own subsequent interest in Jewish identity.[4][5]

One of those memories concerned obtaining matzot before Passover.[4] His grandfather carried a suitcase and held his hand as they walked until a woman invited them inside; there, his grandfather paid 10 rubles for a package of matzot.[4] Edelstein also recalled that his maternal grandfather brought him an old pair of tefillin when he was 13, explaining that the family custom was to give them on the occasion of a bar mitzvah.[5] These encounters with Jewish observance preceded the more sustained Hebrew study and religious commitment that he developed as a young adult.[4][5]

His grandfather began learning Hebrew at the age of 70 and left behind books that Edelstein used after his death.[4] Edelstein subsequently studied with Lev Ulanovsky, a Hebrew teacher and refusenik, and continued learning independently when Ulanovsky emigrated to Israel.[5] The development of his Hebrew knowledge accompanied a growing attachment to Jewish identity and religious observance, eventually leading him to teach others clandestinely.[5] His account links the books inherited from his grandfather, his contact with an underground teacher, and his own later teaching as successive stages in that development.[4][5]

From 1976 to 1979, Edelstein studied at a Moscow institute for foreign languages.[5] While at university, he decided that he wanted to make aliyah and sought permission to immigrate to Israel.[4] Soviet emigration procedures required an invitation or affidavit from a relative abroad, creating an obstacle for an applicant without the required family connection.[1][4] To meet that requirement, Edelstein invented a story that his grandfather had an illegitimate son in Israel and found Israelis willing to present themselves as his relatives.[1] His application, submitted in 1979, was rejected, and he was expelled from his studies.[1][5]

The refusal placed him among the refuseniks, Soviet Jews whose applications for permission to leave had been denied.[6] Refuseniks could face loss of employment, imprisonment, relegation to menial work, and other official harassment, while efforts to secure their departure became part of an international campaign for Soviet Jewish emigration.[6][7] Edelstein remained active in Zionist circles in Moscow after his application was rejected, combining the effort to leave the Soviet Union with underground Hebrew study and teaching.[8] From 1979 to 1984, he participated in clandestine aliyah activism as well as Hebrew instruction.[5]

After his own teacher received permission to emigrate, Edelstein began teaching small groups in private apartments.[4] Such classes were vulnerable to official interference: on one occasion, KGB agents and a regional policeman entered an apartment where he was teaching, took the students’ identity details, searched and arrested him, and warned him against continuing.[4] The pressure was not confined to individual lessons in Moscow.[4] During the 1980s, activists also tried to organize Hebrew-study seminars outside Moscow and Leningrad, but authorities sometimes broke them up.[4] Hebrew teaching belonged to a wider Soviet Jewish cultural revival that also included religious practice, interest in Israel, campaigns for free emigration, and support for imprisoned protesters.[6]

Edelstein was arrested in his Moscow apartment in 1984, and the Soviet authorities formally prosecuted him for drug possession.[9] He recalled being convicted during Hanukkah that year and receiving a sentence of three years’ imprisonment and hard labor.[5] His imprisonment took him to labor camps in Siberia and near the Mongolian border, including Buryatia and later Novosibirsk.[1][5] During his incarceration, he was seriously injured after falling from a watchtower, underwent surgery in Novosibirsk, and remained in a camp there before his release.[4][9]

Religious observance remained important to him in prison.[4] He recalled that wardens discovered his tefillin and destroyed them in front of him, after which he attacked them, was placed in solitary confinement, and began a hunger strike.[4] During a later visit to the Moscow prison, he remembered sharing a cell with 40 prisoners and receiving 10 days in solitary after attacking a guard who stepped on his phylacteries.[10] He described sleeping crouched against a heating pipe and sculpting small objects from bread rations while on hunger strike.[10]

At the Buryatia labor camp, the commandant told Edelstein that a safe contained numerous letters addressed to him, but refused to let him read them.[4] Edelstein nevertheless remembered the knowledge that people had written and had not forgotten him as a source of strength.[4] He was released in 1987 after serving two years and eight months, then immigrated to Israel with his family.[4][8] A photograph dated July 12, 1987, shows him with his wife and daughter following his arrival in Israel as a Prisoner of Zion.[11]

After arriving in Israel, Edelstein settled in Alon Shvut in Gush Etzion.[4] He recalled that he and his wife spent only about a day at an absorption center in Mevaseret Zion before moving to their new home.[4] He subsequently served in the Israel Defense Forces and attained the rank of corporal.[1] Between 1988 and 1996, he was deputy chairman of the Zionist Forum, a role that preceded his election to the Knesset and his appointment to ministerial office.[5] His family life included marriage and two children.[1]

Edelstein initially entered Israeli party politics through the National Religious Party.[8] He later joined fellow Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky in establishing Yisrael Ba’Aliyah, which placed immigrant concerns at the forefront of its agenda.[8][6] The party provided the framework for his election to the Knesset in 1996.[8] Following that election, he became Minister of Immigrant Absorption in Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud-led government, moving from immigrant activism into responsibility for the state’s absorption portfolio.[8] His earlier work in the Zionist Forum and his personal experience of aliyah preceded this national political role.[5][8]

His reflections on immigrant absorption emphasized the practical difficulty of accommodating a large influx of newcomers.[4] Recalling that 200,000 immigrants arrived in 1990, he credited direct absorption and the absorption basket with helping Israel manage the demand.[4] He argued that absorption centers alone might not have been able to cope with an immigration wave of that size.[4] His own brief stay in an absorption center offered a personal point of reference for his discussion of alternatives to extended residence in such facilities.[4]

Reelected in 1999, Edelstein was appointed Deputy Minister of Immigrant Absorption by Ariel Sharon in 2001.[8] From 1999 to 2006, he also chaired the Golan Lobby, which worked against proposals to transfer the Golan Heights to Syria.[8] He retained his Knesset seat following the 2003 election, after which Yisrael Ba’Aliyah merged with Likud.[1] His parliamentary career then included a temporary interruption: he lost his seat in 2006 but returned in February 2007 as a replacement for Dan Naveh.[1] In March 2007, during the 17th Knesset, he became a Deputy Speaker.[8]

Edelstein retained his seat in the 2009 election and became Minister of Information and Diaspora in Netanyahu’s government.[1] The ministry is also identified in his career chronology as the Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs portfolio, which he held from 2009 to 2012.[5] He was reelected to the Knesset in January 2013.[1] On March 18, 2013, the plenum elected him the Knesset’s 17th Speaker, beginning a period in that office that continued until March 2020.[1] His progression to the speakership followed service in immigrant absorption, Diaspora affairs, and the parliamentary leadership.[1][8]

In 2017, Edelstein made an official visit to Moscow as Knesset Speaker and addressed Russia’s Federation Council.[9] The address was the first of its kind by an Israeli politician before that body.[9] Before the visit, he reflected on the symbolism of a former Soviet prisoner returning to Moscow to speak Hebrew as the representative of Israel’s parliament.[2] He described the journey as “coming full circle,” connecting his public role in Israel with the places where he had studied, taught, been arrested, and been imprisoned.[9]

The visit included the apartment where he had taught Hebrew, the site of his arrest, the courthouse where he had been tried, and the prison in which he had been held before trial.[9] Returning to his former cell prompted detailed recollections of overcrowding, punishment, and his efforts to maintain religious observance.[10] The official parliamentary address and these personal visits formed distinct parts of the same journey: he returned both as the Speaker of the Knesset and as a former prisoner revisiting the institutions that had confined him.[9][10]

His tenure as Speaker ended with his resignation on March 25, 2020, following the Supreme Court’s order that he convene a vote to elect a Speaker for the new Knesset.[3] In May 2020, he accepted Netanyahu’s offer to become Minister of Health, taking responsibility for that portfolio during the coronavirus emergency.[12] The appointment followed earlier ministerial service in immigrant absorption and information and Diaspora affairs, but placed him in a different policy field amid an ongoing public-health crisis.[12]

In June 2020, Edelstein warned that coronavirus infections were increasing and said that the previous day had brought more than 230 new cases.[13] He opposed a renewed lockdown and favored keeping the economy open, while arguing that continued reopening depended on extensive testing, rapid results, and public discipline.[13] At that stage, the government chose not to impose renewed general restrictions, although particular areas could be designated restricted areas.[13] A Health Ministry request to close schools was dropped after Education Minister Yoav Galant objected.[13]

Edelstein placed 18th in the Likud primaries held in August 2022.[14] After Likud returned to power in 2023, he became chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.[1] In July 2025, Likud voted to replace him after he refused to advance legislation exempting ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students from military service; Boaz Bismuth succeeded him as committee chair.[1]

At a September 4, 2023, conference marking 30 years since the Oslo Declaration of Principles, Edelstein addressed the Oslo process and the possibility of extending the Abraham Accords through Israeli-Saudi normalization.[15] The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs reported that he also supported legislation providing substantial punitive damages for victims of terrorism.[15] These subjects accompanied his committee responsibilities in foreign affairs and defense.[15]

In July 2026, Edelstein announced that he was leaving Likud and would not compete in its forthcoming primaries.[16] He said that he could not campaign for a party supporting draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men because doing so would conflict with his principles.[16] Rather than seek another place on the Likud list, he proposed a new political framework and called for a “broad Zionist government” that would not depend on Arab or ultra-Orthodox parties.[16] His departure followed the earlier confrontation over conscription legislation and the loss of his committee chairmanship.[1][16]

The following month, Edelstein and former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan launched the Unity party.[17] They presented universal IDF service as a central platform commitment and said they sought a broad consensus government.[17] The party’s stated agenda also included mandatory military or national service for every Israeli citizen and opposition to draft evasion.[1] Edelstein described it as a political home for Israelis who believed they had no one to vote for, and said that he wanted to repair divisions and restore trust.[17]

Unity withdrew before the October 27, 2026, Knesset election. The Center for Israel Education reported that poor polling led the party to drop out to prevent wasting its supporters’ votes.[18] The withdrawal removed Edelstein’s party from the ballot.

Edelstein’s journey from underground Hebrew teacher and Soviet prisoner to Speaker of the Knesset is a defining feature of his public biography.[2][4] His experiences belong to the broader history of Soviet Jewish efforts to preserve Jewish culture, teach Hebrew, and secure permission to immigrate to Israel.[6] He is identified among the best-known refuseniks, whose individual struggles were connected to international pressure on the Soviet authorities to permit Jewish emigration.[4][6]

The 2017 Moscow visit gave that trajectory a particularly direct public expression.[9] Edelstein said that he could not “ignore the symbolism” of standing in Moscow and speaking Hebrew as Knesset Speaker after having been imprisoned by the Soviet authorities.[2] His visits to the former teaching apartment, courthouse, and prison connected the parliamentary occasion to specific places in his earlier life, rather than leaving the return solely as an official diplomatic event.[9]

His political career also retained a sustained connection to the experience of immigration.[5][8] He moved from Zionist Forum leadership to a party centered on immigrant concerns, and then to ministerial responsibility for immigrant absorption.[5][8] In discussing absorption policy, he drew on both his family’s arrival and the much larger immigration wave that followed.[4] His later public service extended beyond those origins to the speakership, health ministry, and foreign affairs and defense oversight, while his final break with Likud centered on military-service obligations.[1][16]

The most consequential institutional dispute of Edelstein’s speakership occurred in March 2020, during the coronavirus emergency and a political deadlock. On March 16, he refused to allow a vote on his replacement and said that the Knesset could not operate because of the pandemic.[19]

A unanimous five-justice Supreme Court panel ordered him to permit the vote by March 25, holding that continued failure to do so undermined democratic processes and the peaceful transfer of power.[19] The justices also said that the wish of 61 Knesset members to express the voters’ choice could not be blocked.[3] Edelstein objected that the ruling contradicted Knesset procedure and constituted unprecedented interference with the elected legislature.[20] He called it “not based on law” and a “one-sided and extreme interpretation,” while several ministers and the prime minister supported his resistance to the Court’s instructions.[3]

On March 25, Edelstein resigned rather than schedule the replacement vote.[3] In announcing his resignation, he invoked Menachem Begin’s conduct during the 1948 Altalena affair and presented his decision as an effort to avert division and renew the spirit of statehood.[3] His resignation therefore expressed his objection to the judicial intervention rather than implementation of the ordered timetable.[3][20]

An earlier dispute concerned the prospect of avoiding a second election in 2019.[21] In June, Edelstein said he was examining whether the law dissolving the 21st Knesset could be revoked, thereby canceling the election scheduled for September 17.[21] Netanyahu indicated willingness to consider the proposal, but the attorney general reportedly told politicians that cancellation was not legally feasible.[21] The relevant Basic Law provision allowed postponement in special circumstances rather than cancellation.[21]

His later disagreements with Likud involved military conscription and party discipline.[1] The 2025 removal from the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairmanship followed his refusal to advance legislation exempting ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students from military service.[1] A further removal from committee membership was reported in October 2025 after he voted for an opposition bill applying Israeli sovereignty to settlements in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria.[1] He called that dismissal “a moral badge of honor.”[1]

The Soviet prosecution also requires a distinction between the formal charge and later accounts of its purpose. A contemporary report recorded officials’ claim that they found opium during an apartment search and that Edelstein was convicted of drug possession.[7] Defense arguments challenged the allegation, noting that the room had no windowsill and that his tight jeans could not have held the alleged matchbox.[7] Edelstein later said the authorities arrested Hebrew teachers but charged them with unrelated offenses, while the Center for Israel Education describes the drug-possession charge against him as false.[4][8]