Alumni Notes from Larry Abramsky (1973-1974)
Thursday, May 8, 2008

"My junior year abroad at Tel Aviv University was a life-altering experience, for sure!"

Tel Aviv, August 2005

"I knew while living it, that my junior year abroad at Tel Aviv University was a life-altering experience ... for sure!!! At 19 years old, I arrived in Israel two weeks before the start of the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, and stayed for the entire year. My overseas dorm roommates Marvin Stark, Joe Rothstein, and Marty Chinsky (of blessed memory) are still near and dear to me to this day.

"Our Em-Habayit literally lost her 19-year-old son in that war, MIA. She spent months searching every hospital ward in Israel hoping to find him. ... Special thanks to Prof. Benjamin Schwadran, author of the bible of the oil industry Oil and The Great Powers -- the best and hardest course of my college career. ... Thanks to Rabbi Kirschenbaum for making 'Religion & The State of Israel' so much fun -- for example: 'You know about halachic Jewish divorces? It's when a husband goes to his wife and yells "GET outta here!!!"'

"In MCing 'Movie Nights on the Lawn,' I got to introduce Steve Martin's WILD & CRAZY GUY routines to the Israelis -- in Hebrew! We never laughed sooooooo hard or so loud. ... I volunteered my Thursdays tutoring English to eighth-grade boys in a Public Beit Sefer Dati in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Tel Aviv. My methods were extremely unorthodox -- and the teachers there could never figure out how I got those boys reading, speaking, and understanding English with only 20-minute private weekly sessions each (thank you Playboy magazines) ...

Volunteering in Tzahal during the Hezbollah invasion/attack, August 2006

"I saw Streisand/Redford's The Way We Were during its first week in Tel Aviv.  When I saw Israeli men crying during that movie, Israeli men crying, I knew then that I just had to be part of an entertainment industry that had that strong an effect in moving people so. Directly after college, I went on to become a successful NYC/LA/London celebrity talent agent from 1975-1984.

"Many of my friends woke up every morning in Israel counting the days before they got to go home to the U.S. I woke up each day looking down at the Mediterranean Sea from my Binyan Gimmel D-4 dorm room window, thanking G-d that I woke up, still in ISRAEL, counting the days that I had left to STAY.  It was one of the best years of my entire life ... so far. Thank you, Tel Aviv University."