Ariel Atias

Ariel Atias was born in 1970 in Tel Aviv

Atias was born in Tel Aviv to parents who immigrated from Morocco, and he grew up in Bnei Brak. His father, Rabbi Haim Atias, is one of the heads of the Or HaChaim seminary in Bnei Brak. He studied at the Lithuanian yeshivas Knesset Hizkiyahu, Birkat Yitzhak and Torah Or.

At 30 he joined the kosher supervision body Badatz Beit Yosef and later became its chief executive. Under his management the organization grew from a small body into one with a turnover of hundreds of millions of shekels. In 2004 he was convicted of building an addition to his apartment without a permit.

He entered the Knesset for Shas in 2006 and became Minister of Communications in the Olmert government. He advanced cellular reforms, including number portability and the entry of virtual operators into the market. After the 2009 elections he became Minister of Housing and Construction and worked to establish a Haredi city in Harish, a plan that failed at the tender stage.

In 2013 he joined the Shas leadership alongside Aryeh Deri and Eli Yishai and became head of the party's Knesset faction, but Shas stayed out of the coalition. He resigned from the Knesset in June 2014 and was replaced by Yoav Ben-Tzur. In 2024 the Council of Torah Sages appointed him to coordinate talks on the enlistment of yeshiva students.