Isaac Peretz

Isaac Peretz was born in 1938 in Casablanca

Peretz was born in Casablanca, Morocco, in 1938. His father was a merchant who owned a shoe store, and the family also included rabbis and scholars. He left home in 1949 with Youth Aliyah, spent a year in a camp in France, and reached Israel in March 1950.

He studied at the Noam yeshiva high school, then at the Hebron Yeshiva in Jerusalem. After marrying he studied at a kollel in Petah Tikva. He was ordained as a rabbi and judge by Hazon Ovadia.

He became a rabbi of Ra'anana and later served as the city's rabbi. In 1984 he was chosen to lead the new Shas party and entered the Knesset. He served as Minister without Portfolio and then Minister of Internal Affairs, resigning in January 1987 after a court ruling on registering a woman converted by a Reform rabbi as Jewish.

He returned to the government in May 1987 as Minister without Portfolio, and after the 1988 elections he became Minister of Immigrant Absorption. On 25 December 1990 he left Shas and founded the Moria faction. Before the 1992 elections he joined United Torah Judaism, then resigned from the Knesset days after its term began.

He was elected to the Chief Rabbinate Council in 2002 and again in 2008 and 2018. He chairs its committee on ritual baths.