Who they are
Yitzhak Wasserlauf is minister for the Negev, the Galilee and national resilience. He was born in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1992, the son of Rabbi Yissachar Wasserlauf, who heads the Ahavat Haim yeshiva high school in Kochav HaShahar. He studied at the Netiv Meir yeshiva high school while serving as an instructor and then branch leader of Bnei Akiva in the Old City, and at seventeen was made deputy chairman of the National Union party’s youth wing. He went on to the hesder yeshiva in Ma’alot, enlisted in the Golani Brigade in 2012 and served as a rifleman in Battalion 12.
In 2014 Wasserlauf moved to south Tel Aviv and joined the kollel of the Orot Aviv yeshiva in the Shapira neighbourhood, headed by Rabbi Achiad Ettinger, whom he took as his principal teacher. When the kollel closed four years later he and Ettinger founded the Oz VeEmunah higher yeshiva in the same part of the city. After Ettinger was murdered in an attack near Ariel, Wasserlauf set up the Achiad association, which runs a Torah nucleus in the Neve Sha’anan and Florentin neighbourhoods. He has stood on Otzma Yehudit lists since the 2019 election. He is a law student at the Or Yehuda campus of Ono Academic College.
Positions and record
Periphery: Jewish settlement in the Negev and Galilee.
Governance: Demolition of illegal construction.
Party: Builds Otzma's field operation.
Where they stand
Holds the party line on every issue.