Israel Segal

Israel Segal was born in 1944 into a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) family in Jerusalem.[2] He studied at the Ponevezh yeshiva in Bnei Brak.[2] At the age of twenty, he left religious observance, a step that carried severe personal consequences.[2]

His family responded to his departure from Orthodoxy by conducting a symbolic mourning period for him, treating him as though he had died.[2] His brother, Rabbi Dan Segal, led the family's ostracism of him, and Israel Segal was reportedly excluded from his own father's funeral.[2] Despite this rupture, his relationship with Jewish tradition remained a defining thread of his identity throughout his life. He later articulated his stance plainly: "Yes, I am a Jew with every particle of my being, but my Judaism is secular. It is different than and separate from theirs [religious Jews]."[4] He traced the roots of his secular identity not to a rejection of Jewish texts but to an immersion in them, writing that his secularism, his rebellion against Halakha, and his political and social positions were all grounded in what he called the "Jewish Bookshelf"—the Bible, Mishnah, Talmud, philosophy, and Hebrew writing.[4]

Segal launched his journalism career at Ha'Olam Hazeh magazine while still in his twenties.[1] He subsequently moved to radio, joining Kol Yisrael and covering religious affairs and police matters as well as serving as a special correspondent for the current-affairs program Inyanei Hayom.[5] He arrived at the Israeli Broadcasting Authority around 1974.[2]

His transition to television proved consequential for the medium itself. He helped create the late-night news program Kim'at Hatsot and presented the Educational Television programs Erev Hadash and Musaf HaMusafim.[2] Erev Hadash had begun in June 1982 under the name Shalom HaGalil before being renamed in September of that year.[6] In interviews, Segal reflected on what made the program distinctive: its early broadcast hour, he said, revealed an unexpected audience hunger for news immediately after work, and its off-prime-time scheduling reduced political pressure and allowed greater editorial freedom.[6] He described the show's strength as rooted in consistency rather than spectacle: "Like an elephant whose steps are heavy, Erev Hadash gains strength from that."[6]

During the 1990s, Segal edited the Channel 1 weekly news program Yoman, where colleagues remembered him for combining strong investigative stories with documentary craft.[7] Yigal Raviv recalled that when he was a young newsreader, Segal would speak with him by telephone late into the night to plan responses to politicians who had attacked the program.[7] Rafik Halabi described Segal as possessing an exceptional sense of social and political justice and as being meticulous about every word.[7]

After leaving the Israeli Broadcasting Authority, Segal joined Channel 2's Reshet network, where he worked as both an editor and an anchor—including as editor of Nissim Mishal's current-affairs program Mishal Ham.[1][5] Colleagues consistently described him as unusually curious and creative, crediting him with shaping the formats of Israeli television news and current affairs.[2] Yochanan Zangen, director-general of the Reshet network, called him "a pillar of Israeli journalism" and said that people who encountered him were profoundly influenced by him.[1]

Segal began writing in the 1980s and produced five books over the course of his career.[1][2] His output included three novels and two children's books.[8] His first two novels were נעילה and אחד משנינו, followed by his third, וכי נחש ממית?, published by Keter in Jerusalem in 2004.[3][8]

וכי נחש ממית?—whose additional title in English is My Brother's Keeper—runs to 249 pages and is catalogued by the National Library of Israel as an autobiographical novel.[3] Its central premise follows two brothers who reunite after years of estrangement with their mother: the younger brother is depicted as a senior media figure who grew up in secular Israeli society, while the older brother became one of the most important figures in the ultra-Orthodox world.[3] The National Library characterizes the book as "an anatomy of a rift from which there is no escape," achieved through movement between first-person and third-person narration, blurred boundaries between memory and fiction, and a fusion of family novel, memoir, Talmudic themes, and anecdotes about the relationship between ultra-Orthodox society and the media.[3] The book became a bestseller.[1]

His two children's books are החזון-איש מת באמצע שעור התעמלות, a 64-page illustrated and vowelized volume published by Masada in Giv'atayim in 1988 and aimed at a youth audience, and לעוף כמו ציפור.[3][9] Segal also contributed an essay, "Asleep at his post," to the 1999 edited volume We, Secular Jews: What is secular Jewish identity?, published by Yediot Aharonot and Hemed in Tel Aviv.[4]

Throughout his adult life, Segal engaged publicly with questions of secular Jewish identity, drawing on his own biography as a man who had left ultra-Orthodoxy but retained a deep engagement with Jewish texts and tradition.[4] He argued that secular Jews risked surrendering the Jewish textual tradition to ultra-Orthodox interpreters by default, and he called on secular Israelis to reclaim the Bible, Mishnah, and Talmud through active study in order to preserve Judaism's "free and humanistic power."[4]

His position was one of dual commitment: a firm rejection of Halakhic authority alongside an insistence that the Jewish literary and textual heritage belonged no less to secular Jews than to the observant. He described the roots of his identity—his secularism, his Jewishness, and his political and social positions—as located entirely within what he called the "Jewish Bookshelf."[4] This stance informed both his personal writing and his contribution to the broader Israeli cultural debate over who speaks for Jewish tradition.

Approximately six months before his death, Segal suffered a massive cardiac event while driving on the Ayalon Highway in Tel Aviv, lost consciousness, and crashed into a roadside safety barrier; no other vehicles were involved.[1][2] He was taken to Ichilov Hospital unconscious and remained unconscious for approximately a month.[7] After regaining consciousness, he recuperated at home in Jerusalem's Malha neighborhood before his condition deteriorated.[2][7] He was hospitalized again and died on Thursday, September 27, 2007, at age 63, from complications connected to the cardiac event, at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital.[1][2]

He was buried at the cemetery of Kibbutz Ma'ale HaHamisha in a secular funeral attended by approximately 600 relatives and friends.[7] His wife was Leah, and he was survived by two children, Uri and Noa; his son recited Kaddish at the graveside.[7] The eulogists included the writer Eyal Megged and journalists Adam Shuv and Dudu Gilboa, and numerous media figures attended.[7]

David Gilboa, a former colleague at the Israeli Broadcasting Authority, described Segal as "one of the most influential journalists of the past three decades" and said that he helped shape television genres, particularly television news.[1] Colleagues remembered him as someone who could transform a standard weekly news program into a deeply researched and distinctive production, and who was guided throughout his career by a concern for the individual.[2]

Yoav Ginai described Segal as highly educated and sensitive.[2] Yochanan Zangen's tribute—that people who met Segal were profoundly influenced by him—captured a quality that recurred in numerous remembrances: the sense that his effect on Israeli journalism was felt as much through the colleagues he mentored and the programs he shaped as through any single broadcast or publication.[1] His final novel, My Brother's Keeper, records the personal rupture at the center of his life, while his essay on secular Jewish identity addressed the continuing Israeli debate over the relationship between secularism and Jewish tradition.[3][4]

The reported details of Segal's estrangement from his family—including the symbolic mourning period and his exclusion from his father's funeral—come from contemporary journalistic accounts and are presented as reported recollections.[2]

The religious character of his secular funeral was itself a subject of comment: journalist Sivan Rahav-Meir described it as one of the most religious funerals she had attended, owing to its sustained discussion of God, belief, Torah, and the afterlife.[7] Friend Nissim Mishal recalled that in their final meeting Segal sang the prayer "Unetaneh Tokef" and responded to Mishal's suggestion that longing might return him to religious observance with the words: "I fear it is too late for me."[7] These accounts are recorded as personal recollections. Additionally, before his death Segal gave an interview in which he described what he characterized as a post-death experience during which he believed he had seen his deceased father; this claim is his own account and is not independently verifiable.[2]