Yaakov Luzzatto

The Honorable Member of Knesset Yaakov Luzzatto
Official Knesset portrait.
Member of Knesset (CL-Dervaylik)
Incumbent
Assumed office February 5th, 1990
Monarch	Hezekiah III (2020-present) Yaakov II (1990-2020)
Preceded by	Uri Laped (CL)
Personal details
Born	August 8th, 1957 Ashkelon, Western District
Nationality	Yisraeli
Political party	Alternative for Yisrael (2021-present) Constitutional Liberal Party (1975-2021)
Spouse	Louise neé Blum
Residence(s)	Yerushalayim, Yisrael and Dervaylik, Yisrael
Alma mater	B.A., Communications, King David University
Profession	Politician, Legislator, Journalist, Copywriter

Yaakov A. Luzzatto (born August 8th, 1957) is a prominent Yisraeli politician. Previously, he has served as both the Knesset's powerful Majority and Minority Leaders, alternatively when his Constitutional Liberal-led Left Bloc coalitions were in power (2008-2010; 2014-2016) and in the minority (2010-2014; 2016-2020), respectively, as well as having served as the Knesset caucus leader of his party briefly after its disastrous 2020 showing, though he was quickly ousted by a more liberal rival, Oren Saddi, who then led the party's Knesset caucus until its dissolution a year later.

He was a longtime Con-Lib politician and a leading center-left political figure, as well as being an influential Left Bloc powerbroker in recent years. He is generally considered part of the Herzogist moderate wing of the Constitutional Liberals. Before politics, Luzzatto worked as a journalist and media copywriter for the evening paper HaMaariv in the 1980s.

He is first cousins with the famed Luzzatto family of the Aligonian Jewish community. Following the Con-Libs' dissolution in late April 2021, Luzzatto joined the Alternative for Yisrael, calling both the National Liberals and the Party of the Left "too extreme" and "too left-wing."

Early life

Luzzatto was born on August 8th, 1957, to Tal and Yael Luzzatto (neé Ben Asher) in the Abrahamoff Memorial Southeast Urban Hospital in Ashkelon, Western District, Yisrael. He was one of three children, with an older sister and younger brother.

His father came from a family of diplomats, merchants, and community leaders; Tal Luzzatto served as the first Yisraeli Ambassador to Latium when relations were re-established after the Year of Blood in 1952. Yaakov's grandfather, Aryeh Lieb Luzzatto, was a community leader and prominent businessman in Gran Aligonia before making aliya to Yisrael during the height of the Era of Great Nationalism in 1911.

Yaakov's family lived in a middle-income Chiloni neighborhood from his birth until age three. From age 3 to 6, the family primarily resided in Ostracine, Sydalon as his father had been reappointed, this time as Yisraeli Ambassador to Sydalon, Fabria and Ascalzar. With the outbreak of the Fourth West Scipian War, he and his family were evacuated back to Yisrael.

He then grew up in Dervaylik, where his father was an full-time professor and lecturer at the Foreign Ministry's Foreign Service Academy. He served his 24 months of national military service with the Royal Yisraeli Army on the Messidor Union-Yisrael border between 1975-1977, before heading to King David University.

At King David University, he studied media and communications, graduating early with his B.A, in early 1980.

While working as a beat reporter for the Dervaylik local news division of the daily evening newspaper HaMaariv in 1981, he met a young investigative reporter, Louise Blum, at a company retreat. They started dating and got married a year later in 1982.

Political career

Fall from leadership (2020)

Following the devastating defeat in the 2020 elections across-the-board on Election Night (January 27th, 2020), rumors immediately began that Luzzatto would either resign as Knesset caucus leader of the Con-Libs, be challenged in a leadership contest, or resign the Knesset all-together.

Luzzatto and his allies immediately sought to control the narrative and dismissed any concerns, blaming the electoral defeats solely at Yosef Kaduri's weakness as a candidate and extreme-left views as responsible for Reuven Goldschmidt's defection to create his own centrist alternative as well as the party's collapse across numerous decades-old political strongholds and bastions.

Of the 18 Knesset seats lost in the election, 11 were of backbenchers who had been in the legislative body for at least a decade or more; one member, Yair Oppelner, had been in Knesset in a long-believed "safe" Con-Lib seat since 1984. Most of the party's established legislators were wiped away, as well as most of the party's swing-seat moderates in the suburbs.

Within several days of the election, Kaduri supporters and members of the surviving liberal wing began coalescing around Oren Saddi, who barely held on to his previously deep-gold seat in urban Netanya, where in earlier election cycles the Conservatives could barely break 20%. In 2020, the United Center Bloc candidate won 47.8% of the vote.

The left blamed the suburban centrists and establishment figures like Luzzatto for not rallying around Kaduri strongly enough and "backstabbing" the 2020 presidential candidate. Just before the 49th session of Knesset was organized, Saddi announced his challenge to Luzzatto. The only voters were the party's MKs, now only numbering a mere 14. Most of the surviving members were in the liberal wing, but several had overlap as longtime party figures friendly with the political establishment and political class.

Luzzatto and his allies whipped the votes and found the caucus deadlocked at 7-7. On the day of the leadership vote, it was discovered Saddi cut a deal with a pair of liberal but establishment-friendly MKs to back him, and on February 4th, 2020, the caucus voted in secret ballot to replace Luzzatto with Saddi on a 9-5 vote.

Political views

Luzzatto was a moderate, establishment-oriented center-left politician within both the Con-Libs and their Left Bloc political alliance.

He was extremely close with former President Eitan Herzog, having known each other for numerous years and being ideologically and temperamentally-inclined. A swing vote between the Con-Libs' business wing and green liberals, Luzzattoo played an important role crafting gradual, "balanced" growth, transportation, and commuter policies under Herzog's tenure in the mid-to-late 2000s and early 2010s.

He has consistently favored small, broad-based tax increases to fund a larger social budget and state charitable subsidies as well as tax reform to curb the tax collection gap.

On foreign policy, he tends to favor a more hawkish, assertive stance through either a multilateral or military-alliance structure, which marks him as being in the pro-defense national liberal wing of his party.

Since April 27, 2021, he has joined the Alternative for Yisrael, and is considered among the more "left-wing" members of the center-left party.

Personal life and family

Luzzatto is married to wife Louise since 1982. They have 2 children (by order of age): Rachel (age 36) and Ezra (age 29). They both consider themselves Chiloni. They have two dogs, named Kidon and Guiseppe.

The Luzzattos belong to a wealthy gated private community of mostly Chilonim in Harbor Park West, Dervaylik as well as maintain a secondary home for Yaakov's legislative duties in Rehavia, Yerushalayim.

Besides politics, Luzzatto teaches a course on media, communications, and politics at his alma mater, King David University, as a guest lecturer since 2017. He is also a Ghantish hockey fan, avidly watching its league matches on international television with friends and family.