Who they are
Haim Biton has spent his working life running haredi education networks, and is director-general of Shas.
He was born in 1978 to Rabbi Yeshua and Rachel Biton and studied at the Ateret Yisrael yeshiva. He began at twenty as an assistant to the deputy director of El HaMaayan, became deputy director of Rabbi Yitzhak David Grossman’s Migdal Ohr network three years later, and then ran it for eleven years. He also sat on the Migdal HaEmek city council.
Aryeh Deri brought him into party work, first as head of his bureau and then as director-general of Shas, and he went on to run its municipal and Knesset campaign headquarters. He spent six years from 2015 directing the Bnei Yosef Torah education network. In June 2020 the deputy attorney-general, Raz Nizri, ruled that he could not hold the party directorship and the network directorship at once, and Biton said he would stay at Bnei Yosef. He was later made minister in the education ministry alongside Yoav Kisch, responsible for haredi education, and resigned in July 2025 over the conscription law crisis.
A criminal investigation was opened in March 2025 into the suspected use of education ministry money to fund the Shas newspaper HaDerech. Biton, who had run the education network for part of the period in question, was questioned under caution a second time in July 2026. No charges have been filed.
Positions and record
Education: Autonomy and budgets for Haredi school networks.
Draft: Blanket exemption for Torah students.
Curriculum: No core-curriculum mandates on yeshiva schools.
Investigation: Police finished a fraud and breach-of-trust investigation into his running of the Maayan HaChinuch HaTorani network and passed the file to the State Attorney in August 2026. No charge has been filed.
Where they stand
Holds the party line on every issue.