Azaryahu (Ozerkovskaya) Sara (1873, Dvinsk, Vitebsk Governorate – 1962, Kibbutz Afikim, Israel) - an educator, a participant in the Zionist movement, and an organiser of the women's movement in Israel.
Sara’s father, Shmaryahu Meyerov, came from a rabbinical family. At the age of six, Sara Azaryahu began learning Hebrew and Russian. She passed her exams externally and obtained a teaching certificate. In her youth, she joined the proto-Zionist movement Hovevei Zion and was among the organisers of the first Bnot Zion (“Daughters of Zion”) organisation in Dvinsk.
In 1897, together with her sister, Sara Azaryahu visited Palestine for the first time, staying for two months. In 1900, she began her teaching career, initially in Lublin at a heder for girls, and later at a girls' school in Warsaw. In 1901, she married Yosef Azaryahu (Ozerkovsky) (1872–1945) and moved with him to Switzerland, where she studied at the University of Bern for two years.
Sara Azaryahu was a delegate at the Fifth Zionist Congress (Basel, 26–30 December 1901) and belonged to the democratic faction. Upon returning to Russia, she and her husband worked at a general education school for girls in Golta (near Odessa), where she served as the school's director for a year.
In 1905, the couple moved to Palestine, and in 1906, she started teaching at a girls' school in Jaffa. She was the first female teacher to teach general subjects, such as mathematics and geography. She was also among the founders of Tel Aviv.
During the First World War, Sara Azaryahu lived with her husband in Haifa, where she taught at a secondary school for four years. After the war, she moved to Jerusalem, where she served as the director of two girls' schools between 1919 and 1924. She concluded her teaching career in 1924 when her husband became the head of the Teachers' Union of the Land of Israel.
In 1949, Sara Azaryahu moved from Jerusalem to Kibbutz Afikim to live with her daughter. Azaryahu actively participated in public life, founding the first women's society in Haifa that campaigned for women's political rights in various spheres. In 1919, she was involved in establishing the Union of Jewish Women for Equal Rights in the Land of Israel and became a member of its governing board. From 1920, she represented this organisation at meetings of other women's groups.
For several years, Sara Azaryahu served as a magistrate in Tel Aviv. Between 1927 and 1929, in the lead-up to the Great Depression, she was actively involved in assisting unemployed women. She published numerous articles on women's issues and their role in society.
In 1957, her book on the history of the women's movement in Israel, The Women's Union in the Struggle for Equality (in Hebrew), was published. Her children's families live and work in the kibbutzim of Afikim and Ginosar.
References:
Tidhar Encyclopedia, Tel Aviv, 1949, Vol. 3 (Hebrew).
Sara Azaryahu: A Short Biography Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, ed. D. Ofer, P. Hyman, N.Y., 2007.