Our popular Southern Jewish Voices program will continue when interviewer Margaret Norman sits down with Asaf Stein on Wednesday, March 19, at noon.
RSVP now for your complimentary lunch ticket.
Asaf was born in Be’er Sheva, Israel, and lived on a moshav | cooperative agricultural community until he was 5. In the 1970s his parents made Aliyah (the Jewish act of immigrating from the diaspora to Israel; his mother is from Canada and father is from Birmingham) before relocating to Birmingham in 1989.
While in college he returned to Israel as part of the Birthright Israel program. He later participated on a volunteer trip to Israel through the Birmingham Jewish Federation. But he put off moving back to Israel while he studied biomedical engineering — ultimately as a PhD student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
He made Aliyah when he was 28 and overcame a number of obstacles — including his “advanced” age — to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces. He ended up serving with the storied Golani Brigade in a number of cross-border and antiterrorist operations.
After three years he moved back to Birmingham, got married, and now has three children.
