Eli Yishai was born in Israel in 1962 to a family of immigrants from Tunisia. He grew up in Jerusalem, where he studied at a Modern Orthodox school. After completing his military service he joined Shas, the ultra-Orthodox Sephardic political movement.

Yishai began his career as an assistant to the first Shas member of the Jerusalem City Council (1983). He later served as a council member himself (1987–1988) and then was, successively, an aide to Minister of Internal Affairs Aryeh Derʿi, general secretary of the party, and CEO of the party’s educational organization, El Hamaʿayan.

Unlike o…