Michael Freund (Israeli)

Michael Freund is an American Israeli political activist who advocates on behalf of individuals and groups who self-identify as Jews or would-be Jews, including self-described descendants of the Lost tribes of Israel, crypto-Jews, hidden Jews, and Jews forcibly assimilated under Communist rule, and converts to Judaism, attempting to regularize their legal status as Jews under Israeli law and secure permission for them to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return. He founded the organization Shavei Israel.

Freund attracts controversy both because the immigrants he advocates for are religiously Orthodox in a tightly contested political system, and because they often settle in the controversial West Bank.

Childhood and education

Freund grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and attended the Ramaz School and Princeton.[1][2][3] He spent a post-college year in israel, studying in a yeshiva and working part-time for the concert pianist and journalist David Bar-Illan. He returned to New York as a speechwriter and aide with the Israeli Mission to the United Nations, then went on to earn a graduate degree in business administration from Columbia University.[1]

He married Sarah Green and the young couple made aliyah in 1995 with their infant son.[1]

Freund is the son of Harry Freund, co-founded of the merchant-banking firm Balfour Investors and grandson of Miriam Freund-Rosenthal, a former President of Hadassah Women's Zionist Organization of America.[1]

Early career

Freund worked for a year with a short-lived NGO called Peace Watch, a right-of-center group monitoring the Oslo Accords.[1] When Peace Watch closed, he took a job with the Sapanut Bank in Tel Aviv, work he did not enjoy.[1] In 1996 he became deputy director of communications under Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.[3][2] After Netanyahu lost an election 1999 election to Ehud Barak in 1999, Freund took a job with Ruder Finn, a Jerusalem public relations firm.[1] At some point, backed by family money, he left his job in public relations to devote himself to the work of "returning" "lost" Jewish groups to Israel.[1]

Shavei Israel

Freund was introduced to the cause that would shape his career while working for the Prime Minister, when he read a letter from the Bnei Menashe community of eastern India, a group that claims descent from the lost Israelite tribe of Menashe, pleading with the Prime Minister to enable them to make aliyah.[2][3] He invited Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail to meet with him in the Prime Minister's Office to discuss the work he was doing, and the two began to work together to find "lost" Jews and reunite them with the Jewish people and state.[1]

He began to work with Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail whose organization Amishav was founded in 1975 to help "lost" Jews "return" to Israel, splitting with him to found Shavei Israel in 2002.[1][4] Freund, who receives no salary, is the largest funder of Shavei Israel and pays for his travel to remote Jewish communities out of his own pocket. He describes himself as "blessed" and grateful to be able not only to do, but to fund, work he is deeply committed to.[1]

Freund believes that the Bnei Menashe and similar groups "constitute a large, untapped demographic and spiritual reservoir for Israel and the Jewish people."[5] He is criticized both by secularist parties objecting to the arrival of new, religiously orthodox voters, and by members of the political left who assert that Freund's true motive is to bolster Jewish settlement of the West Bank.[5][2]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Fishbane, Matthew (19 February 2015). "Becoming Moses". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved 2 May 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Kestenbaum, Sam (28 April 2016). "The New Jewish Diaspora?". The Forward. Retrieved 2 May 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 Mochkofsky, Graciela (28 April 2016). "The Faithful". California Sunday Magazine. Retrieved 2 May 2016.
  4. ↑ Forero, Juan (24 November 2012). "Colombian evangelical Christians convert to Judaism, embracing hidden past". Washington Post. Retrieved 2 May 2016.
  5. 1 2 Prince-Gibson, Etta (27 December 2005). "‘Lost’ Indian Jews Come Home". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved 3 May 2016.
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