Avraham Avi-hai

Avraham Avi-hai (Hebrew: אברהם אביחי; 23 January 1931 – 3 December 2023) was an Israeli civil servant, journalist and author who was a member of the Jewish Agency for Israel and World Zionist Organization executives.

A reporter for The Jerusalem Post, Avi-hai was the author of several books, including Ben-Gurion, State-Builder: Principles and Pragmatism, 1948-1963[3]; Danger!

Syd Applebaum (later Avraham Avi-hai) was born in Toronto, Canada on 23 January 1931, to a Yiddish-speaking and traditional Zionist family.

He encouraged mayors to rent municipal facilities for the first Reform prayer services, “in accordance with the Israeli Declaration of Independence regarding freedom of religion.”[10] Avi-hai was Levi Eshkol's English speech-writer from 1955 until 1965, covering most of Eshkol's period as finance minister and his first years as prime minister and with whom he developed a close relationship.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Avi-hai helped lay the groundwork for Israel's future high-tech economy by organizing the Prime Minister's Jerusalem Economic Conferences of 1968–1971.

[13] From 1978 to 1988, he served as the World Chairman of Keren Hayesod-United Israel Appeal, the fundraising arm of the Zionist movement.

[11] On leave from the Prime Minister's Office, Avi-hai returned to North America to further the studies he interrupted when he came to Israel (1966-mid-1968).

In the early 1970s, Avi-hai was founding dean of the School for Overseas Students of Hebrew University of Jerusalem and its vice-provost.

Avi-hai was a member emeritus of the Hebrew University's board of governors, on which he served actively for over two decades.

Avi-hai, who grew up orthodox, said that he came to Israel to be a “total Jew” and that “the kibbutz and egalitarianism were values” that he had received at home.“They were essential parts of my Judaism.

A combination of modern thriller and historical fiction, the book the story of two men named Avraham, one fleeing the Catholic Inquisition in medieval Italy, the other from renegade Jewish fanatics in contemporary Israel.