My Story
My life has been spent at the intersection of three things I care about: a love of history, a fascination with technology, and a deep concern for the future of the Jewish people. I have rarely had to choose between them.
I first moved to Israel in 1975 and served as an officer in the Israeli Air Force. For the decades that followed my life was split between Israel and the United States, until I returned to Israel for good in 2011. I hold a BA in Economics and Urban Studies and an MA in Political Science, both from Columbia.
I have been an Apple developer since 1983, working in the space long before most people imagined what mobile computing would become. In 1993 I founded MultiEducator, which built multimedia history products and grew Historycentral into the largest history website on the internet. Along the way we produced some fifty applications for the iPhone and iPad — including one of the very first iPad apps, available the day the device shipped — work that was featured in BusinessWeek. In 2014 I added a division devoted to digital publishing, much of it built with Apple's publishing tools.
Alongside all of that I helped found a new Jewish day school, the Westchester/Fairfield Hebrew Academy, served as its first president, and taught history there for several years.
I have been writing a daily account of events in Israel since 2002 — first as a section of my own website, and for the past three years as Tel Aviv Diary on Substack, which now reaches 5,500 subscribers. That is more than two decades of writing down what happened here, day after day. I was a columnist at Newsweek for a decade, I have been a weekly guest on the Bob Harden Radio Show for the past fifteen years, and I appear regularly on i24 News and ILTV discussing Israeli affairs, American politics, and the Trump administration.
Education
BA in Economics & Urban Studies, Columbia University (1972–1975). MA in Political Science, Columbia University (1985–1987).
Also Along the Way
Adjunct professor of political science at SUNY Purchase, teaching national security policy and contemporary affairs. President of Superex International in Jerusalem, manufacturing consumer and military electronics. Assistant Vice President at the Jewish Agency for Israel. Director of special projects for the American Zionist Youth Foundation, coordinating Israel's 40th anniversary celebrations. Officer, Israeli Air Force, 1975–1977.