Yitzhak Goldknopf

Yitzhak Goldknopf reached the top of politics from the world of Haredi public service: an educator from the Gur Hasidic movement, head of the Beit Yaakov kindergarten network and secretary of the Rabbinical Committee for the Sanctity of the Sabbath. In 2022 the Gerrer Rebbe chose him to replace Yaakov Litzman, and he headed United Torah Judaism in the election for the 25th Knesset and was appointed Minister of Construction and Housing. On JudgeMarket, the public's verdict on him rests less on broad popularity and more on the strength of a disciplined Haredi electorate whose bloc voting gives his party considerable weight in coalition arithmetic. That is why the verdict on him is polarized: within the Haredi public he is the emissary of the great Torah sages, while outside it he is identified mainly with the fight to exempt yeshiva students from the draft. As housing minister in wartime he had to deal with the manpower crisis in the construction industry, and his tenure was marked by public storms — from traveling on the holiday to the cabinet meeting on October 7, 2023, which drew protest from rabbis, through footage of him on a pleasure cruise on the Danube in the midst of the war, to his remark about fallen soldiers from the national-religious community, which drew criticism even within Haredi society. In June 2025 he resigned from the government over the failure to advance the law regulating the status of Torah students, and the conscription question thus became the central axis of his standing. He goes into the October 27 election in second place on the United Torah Judaism list, behind Yaakov Asher of Degel HaTorah, in line with the rotation agreement between the factions, and at a time when Agudat Yisrael itself is not united: the candidates of Belz and Shlomei Emunim were registered on the list under a separate party, Homat Torat Yisrael. His influence is structural rather than charismatic — it grows when the sector's demands top the agenda, and it weakens when the coalition math changes.