ALIZA PILICHOWSKI P24 ● SIVAN RAHAV-MEIR

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.

Born 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, Shimon Peres, and even the Power Rangers when they visited Israel!”

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 keep the Torah we received at Mount Sinai rests with everyone, including me.” 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

of roles, most prominently as an anchor on an early morning show. “It wasn’t easy to get up at 4am for the show, but in retrospect it is a lot harder to get all my kids ready for school each morning!” One of her most prominent roles came when she became the anchor of the 6pm news show and began conducting high profile interviews with figures ranging from Sarah Netanyahu to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef to businessmen like Lev Leviev.

Sivan is married to Yedidya Meir, a journalist, radio broadcaster and columnist for B’Sheva. “Yedidya and I met each other thanks to Shabbat. An event that was supposed to take place on Friday night was postponed at my request until Saturday night. It turns out that Yedidya had also requested that the event be postponed to Saturday night. We stood at the entrance to the event, and the organizer said to me: ‘I want you to meet the other religious nudnik who got us to postpone this whole event!’ We started talking, and Baruch Hashem, we haven’t stopped talking ever since!”

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.

About six years ago something changed. In parallel with her work at News 12, writing a weekly column in Yediot Acharonot and presenting a weekly program on Galei Tzahal, she began giving a weekly Torah class to singles living in the Nachlaot neighborhood of Jerusalem. “The class took place every Wednesday at nine in the evening at Heichal Shlomo, with new content each time.” Hundreds of people came to the class every week, which was broadcast live on Facebook and YouTube, and is now produced for Channel 12 in their studios and broadcast every Friday. “The goal is for the parasha to be part of the cultural pulse, part of the Israeli DNA.” Following the success of the weekly class, Sivan began lecturing in Israel and around the world. “It’s fun to share this Torah with different communities, both at Ramle Prison and with the General Staff Forum of the IDF. I won’t reveal which audience paid better attention!” Sivan also began a wildly successful volunteer project called יִמֹויַה קֶלֵחַה, a short daily article on the parasha of the week and current events that reaches tens of thousands of subscribers around the world via WhatsApp. Sivan writes the piece in Hebrew, and a team of volunteers translates it into 18 different languages and sends it out. “I owe so much to this team, who have really given this project life. They are constantly thinking about how to spread Torah to more people, using technology in every way possible.” In recent years, Sivan was voted Israel’s most popular female media personality in a Globes Newspaper poll and listed as one of the most influential Jews in the world by the Jerusalem Post. “It’s flattering and exciting. I try to remember that the Globes poll is not just about me personally, but is also meant as a protest against a media that is too uniform and too provocative, a media that does not respect the values of a significant portion of its consumers.” A mother of five, Sivan’s day begins at 6:30am. “I try to daven Shacharit before I wake up the children. I get them ready in the morning, and when Yedidya finishes his morning show on Kol Chai radio he does a round of drop-offs at several schools. The daily schedule is fluid. There are days at home and days filled with speeches and work – everything is very flexible.” She tries to get to sleep before midnight, but rarely succeeds. What is Sivan’s dream for the future? “Rebbe Nachman once said that we must stop being poor; we must return to the treasure within us. All of us – as individuals and together as a people – have treasures within us that we must bring to the world! And one more thing – I hope one day I’ll learn how to cook!”  A version of this article originally appeared in Hebrew at www.IsraelNationalNews.com.

From top to bottom: Sivan with her husband Yedidya; With Natan and Avital Sharansky; With her family and Rabbi Doron Perez as they depart for shlichut in the USA; With Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt”l.

Making Waves in High-Tech:

A Young Religious Mom Moves her Career Forward with a Little Help from Friends

FemForward is an innovative program designed to help women working in Jerusalem-based tech companies advance their careers and advance to managerial and senior positions, offering lectures, a mentorship program and networking opportunities. The program addresses the ‘broken rung’ trend, in which women in entry-level positions are less likely than men to be promoted to first-level managerial positions. We spoke with Allie Feuerstein, Director of International New Business at OurCrowd and a participant in FemForward’s first cohort, to learn more.

Tell us a little bit about your Aliyah story as a religious olah from New Jersey, and how you began your exciting career in high-tech in Israel. Growing up, I never thought I would make Aliyah; it wasn’t on my radar. But when I came to Israel to study at Midreshet Moriah, I fell in love with the country. My parents really wanted me to come back to the US for college, so I went to the University of Pennsylvania and then made Aliyah a few weeks after graduation. While still in America, I started dating my husband, and we soon realized that we had booked the same Aliyah flight! It felt like G-d was patting me on the back and saying, “Allie, you’re doing the right thing by making Aliyah. Here is a husband for you!” My first job in Israel was working as a research assistant for Daniel Gordis on a book that he was writing called Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn. For the last chapter of the book, we interviewed the authors of Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, and I was incredibly inspired – I wanted to play a meaningful role in building a company. I had some friends who were working for OurCrowd, an investment platform for investing in startups based in Jerusalem. I got an interview there, and the rest is history. What brought you to FemForward, and how did it impact your career? I had been working at OurCrowd for two years when Rachel Wagner Rosenzweig, a friend of mine who runs the FemForward course, told me about it and encouraged me to join. A key lesson I learned early on in the course is that if you want to advance in your career, you can’t wait for a promotion to fall into your lap. You have to promote

Allie and her husband.

yourself and make the case to your manager for why you deserve a promotion. At the time I participated in FemForward, OurCrowd was growing rapidly, and people who started at the company at the same time I did were being promoted. So I went to my manager, an Orthodox guy, and said to him that I felt I was ready for the next step in my career and that I think I could manage a part of the team. He said to me, “Wow, are you sure? I assumed that since you’re a young mom you just wanted to take it easy at work.” That’s when I realized that there needs to be a real cultural shift within our religious community. Yes, I love my kids and will always be there for them, but that doesn’t mean I can’t grow my career at the same time.

I spoke about the situation with Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, my mentor at FemForward, who suggested I speak with my manager’s manager – which is exactly what I did. I

FemForward’s first cohort (PHOTO: FEMFORWARD)

pitched him on why I believed I was the right person to lead our new team in Europe and Asia. I also went to the Chief Growth Officer and made a presentation. They were both very pleased, and I got the promotion a week later, which was very exciting. I finished the FemForward course about a year ago, and I’ve shifted from being an individual contributor to now managing a team of eight people and have more than doubled my previous salary. It’s fair to say that the program worked exactly as it was designed to! It’s incredible that your mentor at FemForward was none other than Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, the Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem in charge of foreign relations, international economic development and tourism – and a fellow olah. What was it like to bond with Fleur and learn from her?

Having one-on-one time with Fleur was incredible. Fleur is a well-known figure in Jerusalem and so I’d known about her for some time. She is so confident, very direct and she can hold her own in a room full of high-powered men; she knows what to do so that her voice is heard.

OurCrowd is a very male-dominated company on the management level, and Fleur gave me a lot of tips on how to present myself and make sure my voice would be heard with a very male culture. We’re still in touch and go out for coffee once in a while. She’s someone I really look up to; she has a beautiful family, she’s a mom of four kids, and also has an incredible career.

What advice would you give to other young women making Aliyah who are interested in working in tech? Have an open mind. If you were working in a different field in the Diaspora, you may have to start at a lower level in

Allie and her mentor, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum.

Israeli high-tech in order to get your foot in the door. Just start with something, and it should lead to opportunities. There are so many high-tech companies in Israel who are looking to grow extremely rapidly; there are companies hiring a hundred people in one year. There are many opportunities for growth and professional development, so if you really want to grow your career, high-tech in Israel is a great place to do it. n