Sivan Rahav-Meir:
A Remarkable Journey In the summer of 2019, World Mizrachi announced that Sivan Rahav-Meir and her husband Yedidya would be moving to the United States to be shlichim for a year, beginning a new chapter in her remarkable career. Sivan’s journey – from a secular home in Herzliya to becoming a leading voice of Israel’s Religious Zionist community – is both remarkable and inspirational.
B
orn to a secular Israeli family in 1982, Sivan moved with her family from Ramat HaSharon to Herzliya when she was six years old. By age 8, she was identified as a gifted child and began an advanced educational track, ultimately graduating high school and completing a degree in Political Science and Management from Tel Aviv University before she turned 18. From a young age, she also took an interest in journalism. “I wrote my first piece for a children’s newspaper at the age of six, and in elementary school I would interview my friends. As I moved through school, I began to get great opportunities as a youth journalist – I interviewed Yitzchak Rabin,
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Shimon Peres, and even the Power Rangers when they visited Israel!”
keep the Torah we received at Mount Sinai rests with everyone, including me.”
During her degree studies, Sivan took courses in Jewish thought. Though these courses lit a spark in her, they were not the only impetus for her religious journey. “If you ask me how it all began, I can give you an intellectual answer, about the powerful experience of learning Nechama Leibowitz, Rav Kook and Rav Soloveitchik. But the simple truth is that a few girls my age invited me to their house to experience a Shabbat, and then another and another, and this made me want to bring that magic into my own life. I began to keep Shabbat. At a very slow pace – some might say too slow – I realized that the responsibility to
Nechama Leibowitz z”l became her role model. “As a 15-year-old girl, she helped me understand that the Torah is about much more than Bagruyot tests (high school matriculation exams in Israel) on Tanach. Reading her books, I began to understand that asking questions is more important than reaching answers, and that making Torah accessible to every farmer and new immigrant is more important than sitting and studying in an ivory tower.” Sivan joined the army and served in Galei Tzahal, the army radio station. After that she joined Channel 2, Israel’s preeminent TV station, where she served in a number
