Israel’s ambassador to the United States came to Long Island this week and made a presentation. Yechiel (Michael) Leiter was born in 1959 in the U.S., in Scranton, Pennsylvania. His father, he related to a packed audience at The Jewish Center of the Hamptons in East Hampton, came to the U.S. in 1938, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria.

When his father arrived in the U.S., said Leiter, opening his presentation, he had “a crusty piece of bread in one pocket, a quarter in the other pocket.” Leiter said he thought about this while in the Oval Office of The White House next to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu shortly after being named in January 2025 ambassador to the U.S.

As a youth, Leiter studied at the Rabbinical Seminary of America in Kew Garden Hills in Queens in New York City. At 18, he made Aliyah. In Israel, he subsequently would be ordained a rabbi.

In Israel, too, his studies included receiving from the University of Haifa a Ph.D. in political philosophy. Back in the U.S., he received a Masters of Arts degree in international relations at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

He served in the Israeli government as deputy director general of the Ministry of Education, a political advisor to then Knesset member Ariel Sharon and chief of staff in the Ministry of Finance when Netanyahu headed it.

He served in the Israel Defense Forces as a combat medic.

In East Hampton on Sunday, Leiter spoke with........

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