President Reuven Rivlin

Reuven "Ruvi" Rivlin was born in Jerusalem in 1939 to a family that had lived in the city since 1809, when disciples of the Vilna Gaon settled there. A lawyer and Likud member of the Knesset, he twice served as its Speaker. On 10 June 2014 the Knesset elected him the tenth president, and he took office on 24 July for a single seven-year term.

He made the unity of Israeli society his theme. In his "four tribes" speech of June 2015 he described an Israel of secular, national-religious, Haredi and Arab citizens who must learn to share a common future, and in 2014 he became the first president to attend the memorial for the Kafr Qasim massacre. He spoke out against Jewish extremist violence and racism, drawing anger from parts of the right. Between 2019 and 2021 he oversaw four general elections in two years, repeatedly assigning the task of forming a government. His term ended on 7 July 2021.