One of our colleagues and fellow bloggers, Jesse Zel Lurie, celebrated his hundredth birthday last December. He has just been honored in an article for his 20 years as a columnist for the Jewish Journal of South Florida.
Zel made Aliya to Palestine in the 1920s, attending high school in Haifa. A lifelong journalist, he began writing for The Palestine Post, now The Jerusalem Post, in 1935. (His brother Ted was editor of The Jerusalem Post from 1955 until his death in 1974.) Back in the US, Zel was the founding editor of Hadassah Magazine.
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| Children at the Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salam bilingual school |
He’s also been a lifelong advocate for — and generous supporter of — peace & reconciliation between Jews and Arabs. His signature cause is the mixed Jewish-Arab village of Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salam.
Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s preseident, is quoted in the article, extolling Lurie as “one of the first persons to embrace the vision of J Street.” He called Lurie “an incredible role model of how to stay engaged and active. He has a level of energy and connection to the world we can all hope to achieve in our later years.”
Actually he turned 99 in Nov 2012, and 100 in Nov 2013. This year he will be 101!