Michael Freund (activist)

Freund grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and attended the Ramaz School and Princeton. He spent a post-college year in Israel, studying in a yeshiva and working part-time for the concert pianist and journalist David Bar-Illan, who at the time was the Oped Editor of the Jerusalem Post. Freund returned to New York and was appointed at the age of 23 to be the speechwriter and assistant to the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, then went on to earn a graduate degree in business administration from Columbia University. and he later made aliyah to Israel in 1995. Freund is the son of Harry Freund, co-founder of the merchant-banking firm Balfour Investors and grandson of Miriam Freund-Rosenthal, a former President of Hadassah Women's Zionist Organization of America. ==Early career==

Freund worked for a year with a short-lived NGO called Peace Watch, a right-of-center group monitoring the Oslo Accords. When Peace Watch closed, he took a job with the Sapanut Bank in Tel Aviv, work he did not enjoy. After Netanyahu lost the 1999 election to Ehud Barak, Freund took a job with Ruder Finn, a Jerusalem public relations firm. At some point, he left his job in public relations to devote himself to the work of "returning lost" Jewish groups to Israel. ==Shavei Israel==

Freund was introduced to the cause that would shape his career while working for the Prime Minister, when he read a letter from the Bnei Menashe community of eastern India, a group that claims descent from the lost Israelite tribe of Menashe. In the letter, they pleaded with the Prime Minister to enable them to make aliyah. He became the largest funder of Shavei Israel. For his work with Shavei Israel, Freund has been awarded a number of prizes, including the Moskowitz Prize for Zionism and the Jerusalem Prize. ==References==