Yossi Klein Halevi

Yossi Klein Halevi, 2008 Yossi Klein Halevi (born in 1953) is an author , journalist and researcher of Israeli culture and society . Halevi was born and raised in New York in a Jewish family. He completed a BA in Jewish Studies in Brooklyn College in 1978, and completed his MA in Journalism in Northwestern University . In 1982, he moved to Israel , together with his wife Sarah (née Lynn Rintoul). In 1985, the documentary film "Kaddish", produced by Steve Brand, which focuses on his relationship with his father, a Holocaust survivor, was released. The "Village Voice" called it one of the best ten films of the year. He worked as a senior writer for the bi-weekly magazine the Jerusalem Report , from its founding until 2002. Halevi wrote a column for The Jerusalem Post , and wrote regularly on Israeli issues for the op-ed page of the Los Angeles Times , and occasionally for the New York Times and Washington post . His first book, "Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist", was published in 1995. In it, he tells of his youthful attraction to, and subsequent break with, the militant Rabbi Meir Kahane . In 2001 he published "At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land". The book tells of his spiritual journey as a religious Jew into the worlds of Christianity and Islam in Israel . Halevi joined the prayers and meditations in mosques and monasteries , in an attempt to experience the devotional lives of his non-Jewish neighbors and to create a religious language of reconciliation among the three monotheistic faiths. Halevi has been active in Middle East reconciliation efforts, and serves as chairman of Open House, an Arab-Jewish educational project in the working class town of Ramle . He was a founder and board member of the now-defunct Israeli-Palestinian Media Forum, which brought together Israeli and Palestinian Journalists . Halevi is a Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute , a Jerusalem -based research institute and educational center. He is Israel correspondent and contributing editor of The New Republic . Halevi is a frequent lecturer on American and Canadian campuses, focusing on politics and culture in Israel. Currently Halevi is writing a book about the paratroopers who reunited Jerusalem in the Six Days War .¹