Omer Yankelevich

Omer Yankelevich was born in Tel Aviv on May 25, 1978, to parents who had immigrated from the former Soviet Union. She was raised in a secular household before her parents became religious.[1][7] At age 16, she accompanied her parents on a community mission in former Soviet states, where she helped teach Hebrew. She later described the experience as formative.[7]

She attended Haredi schools in Israel and Britain, including Gateshead Seminary, and took English-literature courses at Cambridge while enrolled at the seminary.[7] She later studied law at Ono Academic College in a gender-separated program and earned a master's degree in law from Bar-Ilan University.[8][7] After completing her legal training, she worked as a legal assistant to Judge Ram Vinograd, first at the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court and subsequently at the District Court.[8] At the time of her first election, she lived in Ramat Beit Shemesh and was married with five children.[1]

Before entering politics, Yankelevich worked for years in education and public service.[8][7] In 2015, she founded the Just Begun initiative, known in Hebrew as Rak Hitchalnu, to encourage development in Israel's social periphery, particularly in Haredi society.[9][7] Its Art and Emuna gallery exhibited work by Haredi artists and encouraged encounters between those artists and wider art audiences.[7] She also organized legal-aid initiatives for Haredi women.[8]

Her social activism brought her into Benny Gantz's political orbit. She met him through her nonprofit work and later joined the small team preparing the groundwork for his entry into politics and the formation of Israel Resilience.[8]

Yankelevich entered the Knesset following the April 2019 election, having been listed at position 23 on the Blue and White party slate.[5][8] Contemporary profiles differed over how to describe the historical precedent: a pre-election N12 profile said she would become the first Haredi woman elected to the Knesset, while a later N12 investigation described her as the second in Israel's history.[1][10] During her time on the Knesset's Education Committee, she focused on early-childhood excellence, free education from birth to age three, diagnosing dyslexia in children, and gaps in special education.[8]

She retained her seat after the September 2019 election, again listed 23rd on the Blue and White list.[5] In the March 2020 election to the 23rd Knesset, she appeared at the same position on the party roster; Blue and White won 33 seats with 26.59 percent of the vote.[11] The 35th Israeli government, sworn in on May 17, 2020, after a political stalemate that had produced three elections, was then Israel's largest, with 36 cabinet ministers and 16 deputy ministers.[2] Yankelevich was appointed Minister of Diaspora Affairs, becoming the first Haredi woman to hold an Israeli cabinet post.[4][2]

She served until June 2021, when the Bennett-Lapid government took office and Nachman Shai replaced her.[3] In February 2021, she announced that she would not seek reelection. She said she had identified with Gantz's vision of an inclusive centrist party but had paid a heavy personal price because of what she described as baseless falsehoods spread about her.[12]

From the outset of her tenure, Yankelevich framed Israel's relationship with world Jewry in expansive terms. Speaking at a July 2020 meeting of the Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption, and Diaspora Affairs, she declared: "We are the government of the Jewish people ... there are people living in the diaspora who do not want to immigrate, and that's OK, but they are Jews and we have to give them all the tools and legitimacy ... and give them every support due to our commitment."[6]

In July 2020, the government adopted a multi-year strategic framework presented by Yankelevich and based on recommendations from a public committee headed by Maxine Fassberg and Eugene Kandel. It called for stronger ties with Jewish communities, investment in formal and informal Jewish education, closer connections between Jewish identity and Israel, collaborative technology and social initiatives, and systematic study of demographic trends affecting world Jewry.[13]

Early in her tenure, Yankelevich convened a virtual roundtable with more than 30 leaders of Jewish organizations worldwide, co-organized with the Jewish Agency, to address challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.[14] The forum covered community recovery, aid resources, morale and mutual responsibility, education, and preparation for future antisemitism. She told participants: "Together as world Jewry, we will build a strong working forum which will provide and achieve concrete solutions for all of our communities."[14]

In 2021, Yankelevich signed a 38 million shekel agreement, reported as approximately $12 million, with Herzog College for a two-year project to create a global Jewish education network.[15] The initiative aimed to connect Jewish schools worldwide and provide educational content, teacher training, support for school leadership, virtual platforms, and professional consulting. The need had become particularly evident during the pandemic, when schools faced closures, teacher shortages, and limited curriculum resources.[15]

The ministry also launched a project to document and commemorate victims of antisemitism around the world, developing an online database of victims' names and life stories covering hate crimes from the Second World War to the present.[16] Hundreds of victims had already been entered into the system, and the ministry was forming a public committee to set recognition criteria and consider establishing an annual day of remembrance.[16] In April 2021, Yankelevich appealed directly to TikTok to remove videos she said depicted or encouraged violence against Jews, including Haredi Jews. TikTok said it opened an investigation, removed reported videos, and permanently blocked the accounts involved.[17]

Yankelevich and her ministry also promoted a proposal requiring the government to consult diaspora Jewish representatives before making decisions directly affecting their communities. The proposed requirement was consultative: final authority would remain with the Israeli government.[18] The measure followed a private bill promoted by Knesset member Tehila Friedman and was ultimately not put to a vote.[6][18]

In December 2020, Yankelevich gave the keynote address at a World Jewish Congress forum on women in contemporary Judaism, held in partnership with her ministry.[19] The online event brought Jewish women leaders together across geographic and religious lines, with representation from Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative streams.[19] She compared the Hanukkah candles, "held together by a common base," to "the power of individual women who bring their own light into our shared Jewish public square."[20]

In March 2021, she made a ten-day working visit to the United States, meeting Jewish and Israeli community representatives in New York, New Jersey, Washington, Atlanta, and Miami. Those she met included New York Federation CEO Eric Goldstein, Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan, and Hillel CEO Adam Lehman.[21]

After leaving government, Yankelevich was among the candidates considered for the chairmanship of the Jewish Agency. Defense Minister Benny Gantz recommended her, and she was invited to a second round of interviews in late 2021.[22] The agency's Board of Governors formally elected Doron Almog as chairman on July 10, 2022.[23]

Yankelevich's principal historical distinction is her 2020 appointment as Israel's first female Haredi cabinet minister.[4][2] Her tenure also produced a two-year, 38 million shekel global Jewish education initiative with Herzog College.[15] The ministry separately began creating an online memorial database for victims of antisemitism and examining the establishment of an annual remembrance day.[16]

Yankelevich's participation in politics drew criticism from some Haredi politicians. In June 2019, after a seminary in Tel Aviv received her warmly, United Torah Judaism lawmaker Moshe Gafni criticized the institution for hosting a Blue and White Knesset member.[24] Her support for gender-separated educational options was also publicly contested. She argued that separated study was distinct from excluding women and could expand Haredi women's access to academic and professional opportunities.[8]

The proposal to require Israeli government consultation with diaspora representatives drew sharp opposition on sovereignty grounds. A Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies commentary strongly opposed giving diaspora representatives a formal role in Israeli decision-making, while Yankelevich's proposal reserved final authority for the Israeli government.[25][18]

A 2019 N12 investigation reported that the Civil Service Commission had investigated Yankelevich over attendance reporting during her time as a legal assistant and that she was subsequently dismissed from a Ministry for Social Equality post after the commission's report.[10] Her representatives disputed the characterization, describing the attendance matter as a good-faith mistake made with a supervisor's preliminary approval and resolved through an internal disciplinary procedure without a trial.[10] Her departure from politics followed internal tension over her support for regularizing unauthorized outposts in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and she said baseless lies about her personal life had exacted a heavy cost.[3][12]