Simcha Rothman

Origins and early life

Simcha Rothman was born in Bnei Brak on 13 August 1980 into a family whose forebears had made aliyah from Cleveland, Ohio, more than a century earlier. He grew up in a national-religious family, part of the religious Zionist stream of Judaism, in a small enclave of like-minded families in Bnei Brak, attended Haredi elementary and middle schools and then studied at a yeshiva.

Work and career

Exempted from military service on medical grounds, he volunteered nonetheless and served in the army for thirteen months. He took a law degree at Bar-Ilan University and a master's degree in public law in the joint programme of Tel Aviv University and Northwestern University. In 2013 he founded the Movement for Governability and Democracy, known as Meshilut, and served as its legal adviser, and in 2019 he published the book Supreme Rulers: How Israel Became a Legalocracy, one of his two books on Israel's judicial system.

Placed fourth on the Religious Zionist Party list, he was elected to the Knesset in March 2021. In January 2023 he became chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, where he led the debates on the judicial reform, and by October 2025 the committee had passed more than ninety laws under his chairmanship. The Jerusalem Post ranked him with Yariv Levin fifth on its 2023 list of the fifty most influential Jews and described him as the architect and voice of the judicial reform.