This morning, the Minister of Public Affairs and  the Diaspora, the Honorable Yuli Edelstein addressed a group of Bay Area Jewish leaders. Representatives from the JCRC, ADL, the Israel Center, and the SF Jewish Federation were in attendance. Minister Edelstein has a rich personal history, including a critical period as a Soviet refusenik. He discussed how he and the Israeli government are working to improve Israel’s image around the world; he also spoke about the importance of making meaningful connections with Diaspora Jewish communities globally.

Yuli Edelstein was born in 1958 in Chernovitz, Ukraine (part of the former USSR). He studied foreign languages at the Moscow Institute for Teacher Training. A former aliya activist and Hebrew teacher in Moscow and a Prisoner of Zion (1984-87), he immigrated to Israel in 1987 where he served as Vice President of the Zionist Forum in Israel (1988-1996).

He was a founding member of Yisrael ba-Aliya in 1996, and has been a member of Knesset since May of that year, serving as a member of the House Committee, the Committee on the Status of Women, the Committee for Immigration, Absorption, and Diaspora Affairs, the Education and Culture Committee, the Internal Affairs and Environment Committee, the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, and the State Control Committee.

Yuli Edelstein served as Minister of Immigrant Absorption, from June 1996-July 1999, and as Deputy Minister of Immigrant Absorption from March 2001 until February 2003. In the 16th and 17th Knesset he served as Deputy Speaker.