Israeli Supreme Court president Esther Hayut (L), Israeli Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked and Israeli Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon at a meeting on Feb. 22, 2018. Photo by Hadas Parush /Flash90.

JNS.org – Two new Israeli Supreme Court justices were confirmed by Israel’s judiciary committee this week.

Alex Stein, a professor at Brooklyn Law school in New York, will become Israel’s first Supreme Court justice born in the former Soviet Union. And at 49, Ofer Grosskopf, a Tel Aviv District judge, is younger than most Supreme Court appointments. (Israeli Supreme Court justices serve until the age of 70.) The two new justices will replace justices Yoram Danziger and Uri Shoham, whose terms end this year.

“This is a festive day for the Israeli judiciary,” Shaked said. “Stein and Grosskopf are legal luminaries who come from diverse and unique backgrounds, and no one disputes their merit. When I took office, one of the goals I set was to increase diversity in the Supreme Court. I have no doubt their contribution to the Supreme Court will leave its mark on the history of the Israeli judiciary.”

Yisrael Beiteinu MK Robert Ilatov, a member of the Judicial Nominations Committee, lauded the successful nomination of Stein as “the correction of a historical injustice toward former Soviet Union immigrants,” who comprise 1.4 million of Israel’s citizens and “until recently have not been properly represented in the legal system.”