Yossi Klein Halevi

Yossi Klein Halevi was born in 1953 in Borough Park

Yossi Klein Halevi was born in 1953 and grew up in Borough Park, Brooklyn, in a Jewish family. His parents, Zoltan and Breindy Klein, were Hungarian Jewish immigrants, and his father was a Holocaust survivor.

He studied Jewish studies at Brooklyn College and earned a master's degree in journalism at Northwestern University. In 1982 he moved to Israel with his partner Sarah, and they have three children. During the First Intifada he served as an IDF reservist in the Gaza Strip.

He was a senior writer at The Jerusalem Report from 1990 to 2002 and wrote for several American newspapers. His books include Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist, about his break with Meir Kahane, and a 2001 book on his spiritual journey among Christians and Muslims in Israel.

His 2013 book Like Dreamers follows 7 paratroopers who took part in capturing the Old City of Jerusalem in 1967. In 2018 he published Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. He is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and chairs Open House, an Arab-Jewish educational project in Ramle.