Miriam Naor

Miriam Naor (Hebrew: מרים נאור‎‎; born October 26, 1947) is President of the Supreme Court of Israel. Naor will serve until September 2017, when she reaches the mandatory judicial retirement age of 70.

Born in Jerusalem in 1947, Naor graduated from the Hebrew University’s law school in 1971 and clerked for Supreme Court justice (later Chief Justice) Moshe Landau. She worked on constitutional issues in the State Attorney’s Office under Mishael Cheshin, who would later be appointed Deputy Chief Justice.

In 1980 she won her first judicial appointment to the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court. Later in the 1990s, she served as one of the judges who eventually convicted Shas chairman Aryeh Deri on bribery charges. She became a permanent justice on the Supreme Court in 2003.

Naor hails from a family rooted in the Revisionist Zionist tradition. Her husband, Aryeh Naor, served as Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s cabinet secretary from 1977 to 1982. Her mother-in-law, Esther Raziel-Naor, was a long-serving member of Knesset for Herut (the precursor to Likud) — from 1949 to 1973. Her son Naftali — whose godfather was Menachem Begin — ran unsuccessfully in Likud primaries.