Isaac Herzog, who was elected Israel's 11th president Wednesday morning, has an illustrious career in Israeli politics.
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He was born to a prominent family in 1960 in Tel Aviv, where he would spend his early childhood years, some of which were in the prestigious national religious school Zeitlin.
When his father, the future President Chaim Herzog, became Israel's UN ambassador, the family moved to New York and the young Herzog was sent to Ramaz, a Modern Orthodox Jewish high school.
After returning to Israel in 1978, Herzog was drafted to the Israel Defense Forces and joined the Intelligence Directorate's Unit 8200, which deals with signal intelligence. It was there that he met his future wife, Michal. The two married in a small ceremony in the family home.
He was first elected to the Knesset in 2003 as a Labor MK and a decade later, after serving in several ministerial portfolios, became the party chairman.
In 2015 he was considered the main challenger to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the parliamentary election that year, but that vote ended with a decisive win for Netanyahu and his allies in the Knesset.
Herzog remained the head of the opposition until 2018, when he successfully ran for the chairmanship of the Jewish Agency for Israel.
Herzog's father was Israel's 6th president. His uncle, Abba Eban, was the Jewish state's first foreign minister and ambassador to the UN and the US. Herzog is named after his grandfather, Isaac Herzog, who was the country's first chief Ashkenazi rabbi and the spiritual leader of pre-state Jews, as well as the chief rabbi of Ireland.
Herzog succeeds current President Reuven Rivlin, who leaves office in July, at the end of his seven-year term.
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