Avraham Michaeli

Avraham Michaeli was born in 1957 in Kulashi

Avraham Michaeli was born on 29 March 1957 in Kulashi, in Soviet Georgia, as Abraam Mikhelashvili, to a Georgian Jewish family. He immigrated to Israel with his family on 29 June 1971 and has lived in Or Yehuda since then.

He attended the Nehalim yeshiva high school and later served in the Armored Corps through the Har Etzion hesder yeshiva. After his regular service he studied law at Bar-Ilan University, earning an LLB in 1984, and became a lawyer.

Michaeli owns a private law firm focused on civil law and was among the founders of the Congress of Georgian Jews. He entered the Knesset for Shas in 2006 and was reelected in 2009 and 2013. He served twice as chairman of the Shas faction, the second time from June 2014.

In April 2010 a disciplinary court of the Israel Bar Association convicted him in a plea bargain of withholding client funds. He was suspended from the Bar for a year, to begin after his Knesset term ended.

He was placed eighth on the Shas list in 2015 and did not return to the Knesset. In November 2015 he became head of the Shas faction in the Histadrut, and he resigned from that post in early 2017 for personal reasons.