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From Personal Loss to National Service: An Interview with Ambassador Yechiel Leiter

Yechiel Leiter was recently appointed as Israel’s ambassador to the United States, following his extensive career in Israeli public service. Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Leiter immigrated to Israel in 1978 and has since served in numerous governmental roles, including as an adviser to former prime minister Ariel Sharon and as chief of staff to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he was finance minister. Tragically, his eldest son Moshe was killed fighting in Gaza in November 2023. Rabbi Aron White spoke with Ambassador Leiter to discuss his personal journey, Israel’s relationship with the United States, and his vision for Israel’s future.

You’ve come full circle, being born in the United States, moving to Israel, and now returning to the U.S. in this role. Can you tell us about your journey and how you came to this position?

Well, I never had any aspirations to be Israel’s ambassador to the United States. I moved to Israel when I was 18 with no intention of coming back. It was an ideological move, not a sentimental one. I served in government but left over 15 years ago – again, with no intention of returning. However, when the Prime Minister called not long after my son was killed in Gaza, I was in a frame of mind of having to live for him as well. His life was cut short, and I felt that I didn’t have the right to say no to something I knew I could do well and had an obligation to do.

People say “mazal tov” to me, but I don’t really understand what they’re saying “mazal tov” about – it’s not like I accomplished something. I have a responsibility. I feel this is a task I can perform well. Apparently, the Prime Minister thought the same thing, and I’m here to do my best and represent Israel at a very historic time in Jewish history.

Can you tell us about your son Moshe who fell in this war?

Moshe was my oldest son, the oldest of eight children. He was born in Chevron – actually the first child to be born in Chevron Ha’atika, the Chevron of antiquity. He spent 15 years in Shaldag, an elite IDF unit. He was the head of operations for a while and carried out many operations that are still classified. When he was 33, he was sent to the Philippines to oversee the attempt to save people who were buried underground after an earthquake.

He left the army and went to medical school. He got his white jacket in August 2023, shortly before the war, and was supposed to start his rounds as an intern on October 8th. He led forces into Gaza as the point commander of the division. He conducted battles for two weeks that were very successful, and on Friday afternoon, just before Shabbat Chayei Sarah, he was given the command to identify a tunnel shaft from which Hamas was shooting missiles to Ashkelon.

He found it, but his command team was being followed by a hidden camera. When he discovered the shaft, he announced on the wireless, “We found the tunnel, Shabbat Shalom.” As soon as he said “Shalom,” terrorists inside the tunnel set it off. He was killed together with three other members of his command team: Yossi Hershkovitz, who was the principal of Pelech High School in Jerusalem, a musician and father of five; Matan Meir, a film producer from Odem in the Golan Heights; and Sergey Shmalkin, an immigrant from Russia who lived in Kiryat Shmona. Five others on his command team lost legs – two lost both legs and three lost one leg.

Moshe was brilliant and very special. He bridged gaps between people. He was a loving individual. His best friend said at his eulogy that he was only 39 when he died, but he had lived the life of somebody double his age. He loved the story that Rabbi Steinsaltz used to tell about going to the Lubavitcher Rebbe and asking what he should cut out of his schedule because he was doing too much. The Rebbe told him to add something. Every time I would say to Moshe, “You’re doing too much,” he would say, “Abba, I’m going to add something.”

The booklet published by the Leiter family for Moshe hy”d’s first yahrzeit.

At the time, all my kids were on the front lines except one son who has Down syndrome and another in a support role. Four of my boys were in the line of fire, and my two sons-in-law were in battle. When I got the knock on the door I didn’t know who it would be about. When they said Moshe, I stopped breathing for a moment, hoping it wouldn’t follow with my other son, David, who was one of Moshe’s soldiers and was about 30 meters away from the explosion. He saw his older brother get killed and is dealing with post-traumatic issues, but he’s much of the reason why I’m here and doing what I do because he’s with me pretty much all the time.

Many families have had to make this decision this year – we’ve lost close to 900 soldiers. You have to decide in what sense you go on living. You can go on living by just getting through the day, or by adding something to your life. It’s a decision you have to make every morning, to pull yourself off the floor, because the longing for somebody you love becomes physical pain. It’s not just a pain that sits in the heart – it becomes like a physical pain. The only way to deal with it is to engulf yourself in meaningful things. I don’t think there’s anything more meaningful for me than what I’m doing here. That’s my way of coping.

How do you see Israel’s relationship with America now, especially with the new administration?

Initially, the Biden administration stood with us. They sent over an aircraft carrier, President Biden came to visit, and there were expressions of support. The problem was that many people in the administration later took criticism too far. When I arrived, I discovered bureaucrats in the system were slow-walking munitions. It wasn’t an official decision by the administration to employ an embargo beyond the famous incident with the 2000-pound bombs, but there was a functional embargo because bureaucrats just slow-walked everything. Once you start slow-walking something in a bureaucracy, you kill it.

The new administration immediately put things back on track. In some cases, it took time because shifting a heavy bureaucratic system is difficult, but the administration was absolutely committed to doing it. The atmosphere now is one of brotherly love. If we were an estranged brother in the previous administration – we were brothers, but estranged, kept out of the inner family circle – now we’re like a younger brother that’s come home, and there’s a feeling of embrace.

It’s not lockstep – there are things we have to iron out and discuss. Sometimes our interests are slightly divergent, but that’s only natural between brothers and allies. We’re the closest ally the United States has, and this administration realizes that. In the United Nations, we vote with the United States over 90% of the time. There’s no other country that comes close to that.

I just came from meetings with the Secretary of Interior and the Secretary of Energy to talk about integrating our innovative skills and technology with the US. It’s amazing to witness the extent of cooperation and admiration that exists in this administration for Israel and its leadership. The respect paid to Prime Minister Netanyahu as the first foreign leader to visit Washington, and the way he was received by the President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and Vice President Vance was stellar and very inspiring.

Ambassador Leiter during the signing of his credentials with President Trump.

What about Israel’s broader role in the Middle East?

Other countries are looking at our success. We have a higher GDP per capita than most European countries. And we’re only three generations old – three generations ago, we were in Auschwitz. Three generations later, we’ve got a higher GDP per capita than countries that were occupying the Land of Israel four generations ago. That’s an amazing feat. We’re the only developed country in the world with replacement fertility. There’s no other developed country that has a long-term future because there simply aren’t enough children. Church attendees understand this – they say, “This is a miracle.”

It’s an absolute miracle that a country three generations after the Holocaust is the only developed country with replacement fertility. I sometimes draw wonder from my Charedi friends who don’t appreciate the miracle. Ramban made the point that miracles within nature are bigger miracles than those that break with nature, because with a nature-breaking miracle, the awe passes. But observing everyday miracles within the context of nature – these are the bigger miracles.

I spoke in Ethiopia recently, and instead of talking about security in terms of tanks and planes, I spoke about food security. All the solutions to food security – whether in water desalination, seeds, greenhouse technology, or energy – are within a five-kilometer radius of Tel Aviv. With normalization and peace, we could end hunger. There are 900 million people in the 21st century who go to sleep hungry every night. We have the solutions now that we didn’t have 30 years ago.

We sit at the intersection of Europe, Africa, and Asia. “Ki miTzion tetze Torah” means an awful lot – we can broadcast solutions for hunger, desertification, and other issues on the human development index. Our place in the world could be transformative if others would just stop making war, stop trying to destroy us, stop getting in the way of history, and normalize relations as we did with the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco.

I’ve spent time in Abu Dhabi meeting with Arab intellectuals and Muslim clerics. I felt more comfortable there with my kippa than in many North American cities, certainly European cities. Normalization with Saudi Arabia and the entire Muslim world is possible, but we have to first defang Iran. As long as there’s a radical regime sponsoring terrorism, everybody will be intimidated. Once Iran is defanged, the possibilities for dramatic change in the region rise dramatically.

Do you have any advice for those considering making Aliyah or for immigrants wanting to succeed in Israeli public life?

I’m not one to give advice on Aliyah, but I would say, just learn from Nike – just do it. It’s simply the right thing to do. I didn’t plan most things in my life. All of my life has been Plan B, C, and D – pretty much like creation. All of creation is Plan B. We weren’t supposed to make a mistake between two sets of trees, and we did, and everything became Plan B.

I had no intentions whatsoever of being an ambassador. I don’t know how long I’ll be here either – it all depends on political developments. But for now, apparently, it’s the right fit. I never intended to go to Paraguay to work on economic development for underdeveloped countries either, but one day I got a phone call from a friend while grading papers, and I ended up spending three years learning why underdeveloped countries fail.

Judaism began with Aliyah. Three times a day we face Jerusalem. Everything centers around the shining city on the hill – which is a biblical concept having to do with Jerusalem, not something that began with the Puritan Minister John Winthrop.¹

We have to make it very clear that we are indigenous to the Land of Israel. We’re not strangers, colonizers, or interlopers. The people of Israel and the Land of Israel go together. We want peace with everyone and to live side by side with others who live within the land with equal rights. They vote in elections and have representatives in the Knesset. But Israel is Israel. The Land of Israel and the people of Israel form an unbreakable bond.

The theme of our magazine is “Oz L’Yisrael” – strength for Israel. Can you reflect on this idea of strength and courage that Israeli individuals and society are now being called on to find?

We put out a booklet for Moshe’s yahrzeit called “Oz v’ha’anava l’chai olamim, Strength and humility to the Eternal One.” Our soldiers and people as a whole are showing tremendous courage. It takes enormous resilience to maintain a war for a year-and-a-half.

Over 1,200 people were killed on October 7th and close to 900 soldiers since then – that’s over 2,000 people. In the United States, proportionally that would be 65,000–70,000 people. Could you imagine the United States with 65,000 people killed in a year? Yet we are so resilient that we can even demonstrate against each other over judicial reform. We have bandwidth to argue about the kind of society we want and what the balance of power should be between different branches of government.

We’ve had over 5,000 soldiers severely wounded. That’s tens of thousands of people directly affected by this war, plus hundreds of thousands more affected by having to leave their homes in both the North and South for long periods of time. This has affected businesses and entire communities. The entire nation has been affected by ballistic missiles from Iran, Iraq, and Yemen.

Despite being under siege, our economy is still showing growth in a year of war – over 1% growth. Most countries would have a dramatic contraction, but we’re showing growth even under this stress. That’s significant.

I’m often asked where this resilience comes from. Let me share a dvar Torah: Moshe Rabbeinu strikes the rock instead of speaking to it, and there are dozens of explanations for what his sin was. My son with Down syndrome helped me understand something interesting. At the burning bush, Moshe essentially says, “You can’t send me because I have a disability. I’m a victim, I have a handicap.” And G-d answers, “I made you too. I’ll determine what you can do.”

How does the Torah end? “These are the words which Moshe spoke” (Devarim 1:1) – Moshe becomes a speaker! His very handicap becomes his strength at the beginning of Sefer Devarim, which is him speaking, in contradistinction to the other four books of the Torah. That’s why hitting the rock was so severe – it went against G-d’s charge that Moshe must overcome his handicap.

Moshe needed to show the Jewish people that throughout history, they would face many challenges – persecution and exile from country to country. His lesson was crucial: if you define yourself as a victim, you cannot move forward. But when you refuse to be trapped in victimhood and instead choose life, you find the strength to overcome and continue.

The source of our resilience is the conviction that we can overcome. We don’t bury ourselves in self-pity and victimhood; we use tragedy and persecution to move forward and create a better future. That’s the essence of Zionism. The State of Israel wasn’t born in the Holocaust – it was born in overcoming the Holocaust. The same will be true for our heroes from October 7th. We won’t wallow in pain and feel sorry for ourselves, but use what we’ve lost to grow and ensure our future.

¹  John Winthrop (1588–1649), first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, famously described their new settlement as a “city upon a hill” in his 1630 sermon. While this concept became central to American exceptionalism, it originates in Yishayahu 2:2–3, which depicts Jerusalem as elevated and nations coming to it for divine instruction – establishing Jerusalem as the source of wisdom and guidance for all nations, thousands of years before Winthrop’s sermon.