Joseph Paritzky

Joseph Paritzky was born in 1955 in Israel

Paritzky was born and grew up in the Beit HaKerem neighborhood of Jerusalem. He finished high school at the Hebrew University Secondary School in 1973.

In the IDF he served as a military reporter at Galei Tzahal and later as an education NCO in Central Command. From 1979 he studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem while working as a music producer and editor at Kol Yisrael.

He began working as a lawyer in 1983 and later worked in New York. In 1996 he founded the association Am Hofshi with Arnan Yekutieli and chaired it. The group campaigned against what he called religious coercion.

He entered the Knesset on the Shinui list in 1999 and sat on the Finance Committee. After the 2003 election he became Minister of National Infrastructure in Ariel Sharon's government. He left the post in July 2004 after a dispute with Tommy Lapid, and the police found no evidence of criminal acts.

The Knesset House Committee let him keep his seat, and he formed the Tzalash party. Tzalash did not run in the 2006 elections. He was married with 3 children and died in 2021.