Who they are
Gilad Kariv is a Reform rabbi and a lawyer who led the Reform Movement in Israel before entering the Knesset for Labour. He was born in Tel Aviv in 1973 to a secular family whose grandparents had come from Poland and Russia. He joined the Beit Daniel Reform congregation while still at school, and after a year of national service he served five years in Unit 8200, finishing the officers’ course with distinction.
He took a joint degree in law and Jewish thought at the Hebrew University and was ordained at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. He spent eight years at the Reform Centre for Religion and State, running its public and political department and then the centre itself. As director-general of the Reform Movement in Israel he oversaw a decade in which twenty-five congregations opened and the number of Reform rabbis doubled.
Kariv joined Labour after the army and stood in three sets of primaries before winning a seat. Chairing the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, he returned full oversight of the coronavirus emergency regulations to parliament and widened the transparency rules on election advertising. In 2025 he and two colleagues filed 71,023 reservations against the bill changing the judicial selection committee. He was questioned by the Lahav 433 unit in April 2025 over the leak of a closed committee record, and has called the complaint political.
Positions and record
Religion & state: At a Knesset hearing on 14 December 2021, he called for freedom of religion and conscience to be written into Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty.
Judiciary: In a ynet debate on 26 August 2026, he called for agreed rules on the attorney-general’s status, legislation and judicial review, and pledged to seek consensus in the Constitution Committee.
Diaspora: In a ynet debate on 26 August 2026, he supported an egalitarian prayer area at the Western Wall for families from Israel and overseas.
Coalition: In a ynet debate on 26 August 2026, he described Mansour Abbas as a legitimate partner and rejected excluding a party solely because it is Arab.
Where they stand
Holds the party line on every issue.