Yonatan, or as we all know him, Yoni, is one of my better friends in Israel. I first befriended Yoni back in the mid-2010s when I had just finished the military and became more involved in the Jewish Community. Yoni happened to become an Emissary for the Jewish Agency within the city of Denver and worked at promoting relationships with Israelis and Denver Jews. 

Yoni can be seen as the poster child of what the founders of Israel wanted. Service to the country is paramount and personal accolades and wealth come second. He is an Israeli Defense Force Officer, has worked directly and indirectly for nonprofits and government organizations most of his adult life, and now is slowly building his own consulting business assisting with the organizations he used to work for.  

He is also an intellectual at his core and like most Israelis, he constantly evolving his ideas, passionate about politics locally and internationally, and well versed in a myriad of subjects. In the podcast, we talk about growing up in Israel as a kid who lived in a prominent neighborhood of Israel's top brass in society and the opportunities this offered later in life. We talk about family, having a Libyan background, service to the country, geopolitics, and much more. 

Enjoy the conversation! 

Eyal is a very ambitious guy with a vision for the future of his people and the impact they can have in the Middle East and around the world. After his military service, he was traveling around the world as most IDF soldiers do after their service and met people on vacation. Things were going well until he was asked where he was from, when he said he was Israeli the mood of the conversation changed almost instantly and Eyal wondered why. 

This is the birth of the idea and nonprofit called Israel-Is, a nonprofit designed to create a dialogue with the outside world of Israelis and what the country stands for. This means initially providing training to all IDF soldiers once they leave the service in techniques on how to talk about the country and create lasting memories with people from around the world. The second part of the initiative is to invite people from all over the world to discover and visit Israel at some point on their own and experience the country and rich history for themselves. This means creating rapport and building common ground through outreach and using the change in government policies like the Abraham Accords to normalize relationships on all levels. 

I initially heard about Eyal's idea a few years ago and it is impressive to see how far this idea has grown. The nonprofit also has put out a documentary of the work in action called "Finding Abraham". This documentary brings Arabs from neighboring countries to Israel to learn firsthand about the country and its people. 

Link to Documentary - https://youtu.be/YXM3EmXzEeI
Link to Israel-Is Website: https://www.israel-is.org/

Julia is probably one of the most thoughtful people I met in a long time. Her vast knowledge of culture, language, and professional experience is the exact kind of person that the founders of Israel wanted to immigrate to the country. As she is known in Israel, Jules has had a relatively more straightforward transition than most with moving and adapting to the local culture. However, she knows that is not common and feels fortunate to have worked for two corporations in Israel because of her expertise in Human Resources and languages. 

We talk about the process of moving to another place and adapting to your new environment. This conversation led to discussions about what Israel does well and what the country could be doing better in that aspect. We also discuss her time in the US and being there when Trump was elected, and this time in history greatly affected her decisions to move forward and come to Israel. 

I know few people like Aaron, who are extremely well-read, pragmatic, and a believer in his country and the future it will bring. Aaron brings a sensical argument to anything his country faces because that is simply how he grew up. The son of immigrants from the Soviet Union, the family moved to Israel in the 90s as many Russian-speaking Jews did after the iron curtain fell. Aaron's family had to deal with starting from scratch and adapting to the harsh reality of Israel and its hardships as a nation. 

Aaron was the first in his family to integrate into society, being an avid reader and going to school from eight years old on in the country. Meanwhile, his family busted their butts to keep the family afloat while studying for medical certifications in a completely new language. Some say that the Russian Aliyah is the one that genuinely saved the country because of its sheer intellectual capacity. A total of one million Russian-speaking Jews landed in the country in the 90s, about 1/5 of the total population. Imagine if the US accepted 20% of the people in the country (Roughly 65 million people out of 330 million)? 

The family blended in within one generation and actually had to learn how to be Jewish through their kids, who were learning their own culture faster than their parents. As Aaron grew older, he became involved in the youth movements of the country and served in a special unit in the IDF.  Afterward, Aaron began looking for opportunities to be in active roles that represented the country outside of Israel. He was a camp instructor in the US, worked at the Knesset as a tour guide while going to school, had an internship with a US congressman, and was an Emissary in the UK for two years at prestige university. As you can tell, quite the underachiever. 

 Of course, we dive into politics within his own country, what the Abraham accords mean for the region, and even what Binyamin Netanyahu's legacy will be. Stay tuned for a great conversation about life through the prism of Aaron. 

I really love podcasting because I get to hang with friends and people I know but get more depth and nuance into their thought processes. Mai is one of those people I thought I knew, and she really surprised me with her passion and activism in the industry she is a part of. 

Mai began her career as a fashion designer and was lured into the industry based on the allure of these European fashion houses. However, like most industries, once you learn about the system and how it actually functions from the inside, you begin to question if you want to be genuinely a part of it. The fashion world is the second largest polluter on the planet, behind only the airline industry, specifically fast fashion. 

H&M, Zara, and Uniqlo are some of the global brands that are contributing to pollution. How do you stop people's addiction to fast fashion and the lure of cheap prices for clothing? Mai and I do a deep dive into the history of fashion and how fabrics were initially distributed through colonialism to aristocratic courts and slowly migrated down to the other parts of society. We also discuss the industrialization and standardization of clothing and the 1900s,  how that produced a mass amount of clothing and the downsides of this mass production. 

All hope is not lost; Slowly, tech and activism are pushing the industry to rethink their consumers and the lifecycle of garments in a way they never had before.  After two and half hours of talking fashion, my mom would be proud. Enjoy!

Alon is an exceptional person and someone who could feel like life is playing with him. A man whose life changed forever in the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and allied Arab Nations. The war has been studied ad nauseam by historians and how the effective reserve units of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had so much success against Arab Ary regulars. However, this story is different and personal, taking place at Ammunition Hill, a remote outpost in the northwest portion of Jerusalem with a labyrinth of trenches designed to protect British ammo supplies during the British Mandate of Palestine. 

The site itself is a museum at this point, but the story of the men who fought there changed the trajectory of the war to give the IDF confidence enough to retake the Old City, however at a heavy price. Alon tells the story as a Director and from a personal perspective because this was his own unit that took the hill, and his father was a part of the unit. A family legacy of being generational paratroopers is actually common in Israel; the honor and pride of the unit have stood the test of time as it has been the part of every conflict Israel has been a part of. 

The world is simply a better place with people like Alon representing his people and his country. Enjoy this incredible story!

Mitch is a character who loves what he does and shows off the country of Israel to the world. We talk about what makes the Negev unique, what is his draw to the Negev, and the history of the desert for the people around the world.

Lion David is a serial entrepreneur from the center of Israel and has been successful in managing startups. Sometime during his marriage, he began to take vacations to the Negev to get away from the hustle of city life. Slowly but surely, the family began to look at options to actually make the move to the Negev permanently. 

The family initially began to work and live on the local Kibbutz and manage the startups the kibbutz invested in. Then Lion went on to work at the Ramat Negev Regional Council as the Innovations Director for the region. He has met with over 800 local small business owners and assisted them in creating business plans, goals, and formalizing some of their operations. 

Jared is the poster child for Zionism and what is expected for what it takes from making Aliyah (To immigrate to Israel from the outside world). He is a man of conviction and purpose who moved to Israel when he was a teenager. A belief in the country and the peoplehood he wanted to be a part of this and joined the military, becoming a paratrooper where he still serves as an officer today. 

Jared is a man who walks the walk and leads by example in every aspect of his life. He is living on a kibbutz, a socialist enterprise that became famous even before Israel became a country and is part of the board of directors. He works with the youth in the region and sets up programming that creates a dialogue between various parts of Israel. He also assists the regional council in building relationships with partner cities and regions from around the world to have a connection with the people of the Negev. The candor and authenticity are what people are drawn into with Jared.

Tal became infamous during the pandemic for taking control of her city when the city was ravaged with Covid-19 cases. Originally from the town, she rolled up her sleeves with her city council and got to work. Relatively young for politics she was able to reach out to the locals to get buy-in on the measures she needed to take to get the city back to normal faster than the rest of the country. 

The city is thinking big and moving forward with urban housing development, a science center for students to learn everything from Hydrology technology, drone hardware and software integration with 3D modeling, and partnerships with the country to become R+D hub drone technology. 

There is a lot to be proud of in the city and Tal is a big part of this surge. This might not be the last time we hear about what is going on in the city of Yerucham.