Rachel Azaria said in talks to join Kahlon’s party

Deputy Jerusalem Mayor Rachel Azaria is expected to join Moshe Kahlon’s Kulanu party ahead of the elections in March 2015, Hebrew media outlets reported Monday.

Azaria is head of the Yerushalmim faction, which holds two seats on the city council, and in the past served as the director of Mavoi Satum, a nonprofit organization helping women denied a get (Jewish divorce) by their husbands. In the Jerusalem Municipality, she holds the education portfolio and women’s rights portfolio.

Azaria was first elected to the city council in 2008, and held the early childhood education and community councils portfolios in her first term.

In 2013 she was reelected and appointed deputy mayor.

The Yerushalmim party, which she chairs, doubled its strength in the recent elections.

Azaria is an active leader of the struggle against the exclusion of women from the Israeli public sphere, and gained international recognition as a leading Orthodox feminist.

In her role as head of the Yerushalmim party, Azaria advanced the “Community Kashrut,” project, which aims to make the kosher certificate on food items an issue of trust between businesses selling or serving food and their patrons. On its website, Yerushalmim says the project will open the market of kashrut to competition. The project also aims to wrest control over kashrut certificates from the Chief Rabbinate, which is currently the sole body in the country allowed to officially brand food as kosher. The current relationship between businesses and the rabbinate, the Yerushalmim party says on its platform, is one of subordination and not of trust. The project will “bring back Israeli citizens’ trust in Judaism,” the party’s website says.

She lives in the Katamonim (Gonenim) neighborhood of Jerusalem with her husband and four children.

Azaria earned a BA in psychology and MA in conflict resolution, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Her political outlook as a councilwoman makes her a good fit for the image Kahlon is trying to project, with a focus on social issues.

Kahlon, a former Likud minister, has so far announced the identity of only two members of his Knesset list: former ambassador to the US Michael Oren and Israel Prize winner Eli Alaluf.

Azaria refused to comment on the reports she would be joining Kulanu, as did a Kulanu spokesperson.