Uri Lupolianski

Uri Lupolianski, Hebrew אורי לופוליאנסקי, ( born 1951 in Haifa) is an Israeli politician. From 2003 to 2008 he was mayor of Jerusalem. He is the first ultra-Orthodox Jew, who was elected as mayor.

Lupolianski was elected in 1989 to the city council of Jerusalem. He has held the leadership positions of the Deputy Mayor and the Chairman of the Building and Planning Committee and was responsible for family affairs.

In 1976 he founded Yad Sarah, an organization that is sick, the elderly and the lonely offers a variety of assistance, in memory of his grandmother perished in the Holocaust Sara Lupolianski. Today, Yad Sarah has 6000 voluntary members and 96 branches throughout the country.

For his work with Yad Sarah Lupolianski received numerous prizes and awards, including the Israel Prize, the President's Volunteer Prize, the Knesset Speaker's Award and the Kaplan Prize for efficiency.

Biography

Born in Haifa, Lupolianski visited the Yavne School in Haifa and then the school Yeshivat Hanegev. He had served in the Israeli armed forces and worked as a teacher in a religious school in Jerusalem before he founded Yad Sarah. He is married and has twelve children.