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Fixing Israeli

Misconceptions:

An Interview

with

Roi Abecassis

Roi Abecassis has spent a lifetime working with Diaspora Jewry.
His journey has taken him around the world and back again to his current
role as Head of the Center for Religious Affairs in the Diaspora at the World
Zionist Organization. Rabbi Aron White spoke with Roi to learn more about
his work with Diaspora Jewry.

Roi, thank you for speaking with us. You are Israeli born forget how moving it was to do mifkad and hear hundreds
and bred, but have dedicated most of your adult life to of chanichim sing their Russian-accented Hatikvah.
working with Jews from the Diaspora. What inspired you
to take this path? After yeshiva, I got more involved; I worked at World Bnei
Akiva running the Hachshara programs in Israel, as well
I grew up in Kedumim in a family of mixed Moroccan and as camps in Belgium, France and Italy. After a few years, I
Yemenite heritage. My parents had served as Bnei Akiva thought my time at Bnei Akiva was finished – I got married,
shlichim in Sydney before I was born, but when I began my took the bar exam and was looking for work as a lawyer.
studies at Yeshivat Har Etzion, I had never stepped foot But then I got a call offering us the chance to be shlichim in
outside of Israel. In my later years in yeshiva, one of my Scandinavia, based in Malmo, Sweden. We accepted, and it
friends told me they were going to run a Bnei Akiva camp in was a life changing experience. When you live in a small
Ukraine, which seemed, to me, like an oxymoron – I couldn’t community like that, you realize that movements like Bnei
wrap my head around what that even meant! But my interest Akiva are all that people have to hold onto their Jewish iden-
was piqued, and I joined the camp as a madrich. I will never tity. You are helping a community that is fighting to survive.

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