Yuli Edelstein

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Yuli-Yoel Edelstein (יולי יואל אדלשטיין, Юлий Йоэль Эдельштейн, born 5 August 1958) is an Israeli politician who served as Minister of Health from 2020 to 2021.

In 1977, during his second year of university, Edelstein applied for an exit visa to emigrate to Israel.

Turned down, he began to associate with a small group of Hebrew teachers who held classes in their apartments.

One of Edelstein's students was refusenik Alexander Smukler.

In 1979, alongside Ephraim Kholmianski and Yuri Koroshovsky, Edelstein founded an underground organization, known as the 'City Project', with the intent of training Hebrew teachers and distributing Hebrew learning materials.

That year, he was expelled from university and suffered harassment by the KGB and local police.

During this time, he found odd jobs as a street cleaner, security guard, and more.

In 1984, he and other Hebrew teachers were arrested on fabricated charges, Edelstein himself being charged with possession of drugs, and sentenced to three years.

He was then sent to Siberian penal colonies and did hard labor, first in Buryatia and then in Novosibirsk.

He broke several bones after falling from a construction tower.

He was due to be transferred back to Buryatia, but his wife, Tanya, threatened to go on hunger strike if he was returned there.

Edelstein was released in May 1987, on the eve of Israeli Independence Day, the next to last of the refuseniks to be freed.

He then emigrated to Israel, moving to the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut.

He did his national service in the Israel Defense Forces, attaining the rank of Corporal.

Initially a member of the National Religious Party and a vice-president of the Zionist Forum, Edelstein founded the Yisrael BaAliyah party together with fellow Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky.

He was elected to the Knesset in 1996, and was appointed Minister of Immigrant Absorption in Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud-led government.

The long-term project of subsidizing housing for elderly migrants prepared by the ministry under his supervision and cooperation with the Ministry of Construction raised controversy over expenditures overrun incurred by the project.

Edelstein claimed that the investigative commission found such claims unsubstantiated.

He was re-elected in 1999, and was appointed Deputy Immigrant Absorption Minister by Ariel Sharon in 2001.

He retained his seat in the 2003 elections, shortly after which Yisrael BaAliyah merged into Likud.

Although Edelstein lost his seat in the 2006 elections, in which Likud was reduced to 12 seats (Edelstein was 14th on the party's list), he re-entered the Knesset as a replacement for Dan Naveh in February 2007.

He retained his seat in the 2009 elections after being placed twelfth on the party's list, and was appointed Minister of Information and Diaspora in the Netanyahu government.

He was subsequently re-elected in 2013 after being placed on the eighteenth spot of the Likud Yisrael Beiteinu list.

Following the 2013 elections, Edelstein was nominated by Likud Yisrael Beitenu to replace then Speaker of the Knesset Reuven Rivlin.

His nomination was approved by all members of the party's parliamentary caucus excluding Rivlin, who chose to abstain.

It was then approved by the Knesset, with 96 members voting in favor and 8 abstaining.

Edelstein was sworn in as speaker on 14 March.

Edelstein was elected to the third place on the Likud list ahead of the 2015 election.

He was subsequently re-elected to the Knesset and then as Speaker, with 103 Members of the Knesset voting in favor and 7 abstaining.

During his tenure as speaker, Edelstein supported the Nation-State Bill.

Ahead of the April 2019 election, Edelstein was elected to the second place on the Likud list.

One of the most prominent refuseniks in the Soviet Union, he was the 16th Speaker of the Knesset from 2013 until his resignation on 25 March 2020.

Yuli Edelstein was born in Chernivtsi in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine) to a Jewish family.

His mother, Anita Edelstein, was Jewish, while his father, Yuri Edelstein, is the son of a Jewish father and Christian mother.

Both converted to Christianity, and Yuri is now a Russian Orthodox priest in Karabanovo of Kostroma Oblast named Father Georgy.

While his parents taught at universities in the countryside, Edelstein was raised by his maternal grandparents.

His grandfather had taught himself Hebrew at the age of 70 and used to listen to the Voice of Israel on a shortwave radio.

When Edelstein's grandfather died, Yuli began to study Hebrew and read books such as Exodus by Leon Uris.