Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi was born in 1968. He was raised in Israel where he studied until 1986. In 1986, he was drafted to the Israeli Military (IDF) and served in the Air Force. Immediately after his release from military, he immigrated to New York City where he was involved in the Financial banking District.
In 1994, Rabbi Mizrachi decided to dedicate his life to the awareness of Judaism among secular Jews. It was in that year that he began coordinating lectures & seminars among Israelis in the New York – New Jersey area. In 1997 he left the financial district and enrolled a full time learning and teaching in a Yeshiva in Monsey, New York. At that time, Rabbi Mizrachi moved from New York City to Monsey in a small, quiet Orthodox-Jewish town in Upstate New York.
George Deek is an Arab-Israeli diplomat. In 2018, Deek was appointed Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan. He is the first Israeli Arab Christian to become an ambassador. Deek grew up in an Eastern Orthodox Christian family in the Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa, in a building where the other tenants included Muslims, Catholics, Jews and a Catholic priest of Jewish ancestry.[2][3] His father, who worked as a tax advisor,[3] was one of the leaders of the Christian community in Jaffa who served as chairman of the Orthodox Association, and was considered a well-known and popular figure in the city until in 2015 a square was inaugurated in his memory in Jaffa in the presence of Mayor Ron Huldai.[4] According to Deek, his grandparents fled to Lebanon for safety when the 1947–1949 Palestine war, having been told that the Jews would slaughter them if they remained in their homes, but expecting to return home once Arab armies defeated the Jews.[3] According to Deek, when the war ended, his grandparents felt that they had been “deceived”, and decided to return illegally to their home in Jaffa rather than remaining in Lebanon as refugees. Since reentering the country was illegal, Deek’s grandfather, an electrician, was arrested and jailed.
