Who they are
Yitzhak Pindrus has spent his career in haredi municipal politics, as mayor of Beitar Illit and later acting mayor of Jerusalem. He was born in Jerusalem in 1971 to Moshe and Zelda Heller, immigrants from the United States, and studied at the Aderet Eliyahu Talmud Torah and yeshiva. He settled in Beitar Illit at nineteen, helped found the town’s general charity fund, and ran the Atara LeYoshna association and the Ner LeRachel U’Vaneha nonprofit. At twenty-six he served a year and nine months in the Etzion Brigade.
He began in public life in 1991 as adviser to the head of the Beitar Illit council, took a council seat for Degel HaTorah five years later and was made deputy head, then unseated the sitting mayor in 2001. The town’s population doubled and then tripled while he ran it. He lost the next contest after a rotation agreement was invoked against him, and moved to Jerusalem city hall, where he was deputy mayor for a decade with the haredi education and sanitation portfolios and acting mayor for the last two and a half years. A court struck out his 2018 candidacy for mayor of Elad, and he spent the following year running the Haredi Institute for Policy Research.
He has sat in the Knesset in spells under the Norwegian Law. He chairs the Yahadut HaTorah faction and has been secretary-general of Degel HaTorah since 2020.
Positions and record
Draft: Torah study as a constitutional value.
Cities: Planning and budgets for Haredi municipalities.
Judiciary: Curb the court's reach over religious legislation.
Where they stand
Holds the party line on every issue.