Journalism Award aims to be face of European Jewry.
By GREER FAY CASHMANAntonia Yamin(photo credit: KAN)
Antonia Yamin, the KAN representative in Europe, was this year’s winner in the broadcast section of the B’nai B’rith World Center journalism award.Yamin said that when she landed in Berlin in 2017, she wondered how she would find stories and tell them well enough to grab the attention of Israeli television viewers.The first Jew that she saw in Berlin was a man of about 40, who hid his side curls beneath a peaked cap, and who hid the strings of his ritual garment inside the waist band of his pants.He was somewhat flustered as he became aware that she knew that he was Jewish. It was not the first time that someone had identified his background. There was something of a haunted look in his eyes, and she immediately realized that the story in Europe would be different from anything she might have anticipated while still in Israel.“The story of the Jews of Europe is a story worth telling,” she said.Chicago-born Zvika Klein of Makor Rishon won in the print media section for the second time, having previously won the award six years earlier.Klein said that when he started out as a Jewish world reporter, he was advised by another journalist to graduate from there to politics. When Klein said that he wanted to stay with the Jewish world because he found it extremely interesting, his interlocutor told him that there was no future in such a beat.Indeed, at that time there were very few journalists that he could count as rivals, but more recently more journalists are discovering that the Jewish world is an exciting subject to cover. The story of the Jewish world includes every kind of Jew, he said.A certificate of merit was awarded to YNET’s Attila Somfalvi, and a special citation to singer, actor, commentator and former politician in local government Yehoram Gaon for fostering Israel-Diaspora relations through the arts.Somfalvi was absent because he was covering the Ethiopian community protest demonstrations, but sent a video in which he said that the problem with Israelis is that they like to embrace dead Diaspora Jews such as the ones who were killed in the terror attack on a synagogue in Pittsburgh.
