Reut Peleg Yisraela Gratzayani

Sammy Smooha Yasser Mansour

Moshe Stein Tamar Kriegel

Michail Famous Gabi Boron

Nissim Abu Hamad Boaz KatzAmal el-Sanna

Meir Bouskila

Malaku Mukonen

• The Ashkenazim-Israel’s Chalutzim• Name: Reut Peleg• Age: 12• Residence: Tel Aviv• Religion: Secular Jewish (Hiloni)• Profession: Student• Parents’ Professions: Reporter, Department Store Executive• Favorite Hangout: The Tel Aviv mall • “My great-grandmother escaped anti-Semitic massacres in Russia to the Land of Israel, then called

Palestine and ruled by the Ottoman Empire. My family was among the early halutzim—pioneers of the Land of Israel who believed that after two millennia in exile, Jews needed a state of their own.”

• “My family was among the 60 original families that founded Tel Aviv in 1909. We bought the land from Arabs north of Jaffa. In 1909, sixty original families picked their plots by lottery and, in the sandy wilderness, built the first new Jewish town in two thousand years.”

Moroccan Jews

Name: Meir BouskilaResidence: Kiryat Malachi

Profession: Soccer Coach, former construction workerReligion: Traditional Jewish (Masorti)

“I’m not bitter, I’m a builder. I welcome onto my soccer team children from Ethiopia and children from the Former Soviet Union who live in new

immigrants absorption center. I don’t want these kids to feel like outsiders like I did when I came from Morocco. I want them all to feel ‘blue and white’. “

“My G-d is flexible and tolerant. That means that after I go to Sabbath services, I coach soccer. The kids need it, it boosts their image. They have

goals and I’ve seen them achieve them. We Israelis fight well together so why separate ourselves and fight each other? Why keep pushing the differences?

We’re all Israelis.”

Sephardi, Masorati Jews

Yisraeli Gratzyani

Residence: NetanyaProfession: Lawyer

Religion: Jewish/Traditional Sephardi“I’m a traditional Sephardi, which means I have strong emotional ties to Judaism, but I am

very open-minded. After lighting candles each Shabbat evening, I love to go dancing at friends’ house parties.”

The Mizrahi Jews—Israelis from Arab LandsName: Sammy Smoocha

Residence: HaifaProfession: Professor of Sociology

Religion: Traditional Jewish (Masorti)“I was born in Baghdad, Iraq, part of one of the oldest Jewish Diaspora communities. For many years we prospered there. But in 1941 pro-Nazi Iraqis instigated a pogrom killing over 135 Jews. Then after Israel

was established in 1948, mobs began gathering in Baghdad’s central square hanging Jews. The government responded by nationalizing Jewish property and killing and jailing hundreds of Jews. My

family escaped in 1951 with the shirts on our backs, arriving in Israel penniless.

Ethiopian Israeli

Name: Malaku Mukonen

Residence: Mevasseret Zion, Immigrant Absorption CenterReligion: Jewish

Profession: Future Airplane Mechanic“All my life I knew war in Ethiopia. Finally I have peace. My daughter Isabella was born

here and represents a new chapter in our family history. I wish my parents could see her. They died of starvation during the civil war. I am optimistic about my future here in Israel.

After I learn Hebrew, I want to go to school and become an airplane mechanic.”

Arab-Israeli, Muslim

Yasser Mansour

Residence: HaifaProfession: Pediatrician

Religion: Islam“These days I see some small hope on the horizon. Maybe these last years of brutal madness for everybody will end. Here in Haifa, I see Jews and Arabs living together.

What we need are models for coexistence, such as more good schools where Arab and Jewish children can learn about each other’s cultures and to respect differences. I think the ideal age to begin in three, before the child is exposed to the surrounding tensions.

This could be an important gift for the children of this conflicted land.”

Ultra-Orthodox Jews

Moshe SteinResidence: Jerusalem

Profession: StudentReligion: Jewish, ultra-Orthodox

“Secular Jews don’t know what is Shabbos. And they don’t know what is kosher. There is Jewish. Then there’s Jewish-Jewish. We’re Jewish-

Jewish-Jewish.”

Arab Israeli, Christian

Michail Famous

Residence: RamleProfession: CEO of Nonprofit Agency

Religion: Christian“I’ve been living here, a minority all my life, an Anglican among Orthodox Christians, a Christian among Muslims, a Palestinian among Jews, a left-winger in a right-wing town. Often I feel like a bridge between Jews and Muslims.

Christians have always lived between two worlds. So maybe we’re the ones who can connect them.”

Mizrahi, Masorati Jews

Name: Gabi Boron

Residence: SderotProfession: Student

Religion: Traditional Jewish (Masorati)“When I hear a Code Red, I know what to do. If I have a house near me, even if it’s a stranger, I’ll run in without knocking. If there’s no house, I run to a tree. And if there’s no tree, I lie down on my stomach and cover my head. Six missiles have hit my elementary school, sending off

explosives, bullets, nails and shrapnel.”

Druze Israeli

Nissim Abu Hamad

Residence: Daliyat al-CarmelProfession: High-tech entrepreneur

Religion: Druze“Our company is trying hard to make it. I want to prove a Druze can do it. Druze lose time in the army. I lost three years. Yet, because of the army, I have this business. Before the army, I had no Jewish friends. It is

difficult to make it in high tech as a Druze. I enter the market, I got a Jewish partner, a friend who is a colonel. His connections helped me with the startup marketing.”

Arab-Israeli, Muslim

Yasser Mansour

Russian Jews

Name: Boaz Katz

Residence: Tel AvivProfession: Software engineer

Religion: Jewish“During the years of militant atheism in the Former Soviet Union, we were known as the Jews of Silence. We were afraid. We hid our Jewishness. Jews have to overcome decades of amnesia. Mostly what people know

about Judaism in the Former Soviet Union are distortions and lies. I’ll never forget when I asked a man from my town in Ukraine if he’d ever seen a

Torah. He said, ‘Yes, at the Museum of Atheism in Moscow, in a display that showed how primitive people once

prayed.”