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Michael and Isaac Herzog talk about life growing up as members of Israel’s political aristocracy

The brothers talk to the JC as they tour Ireland and the UK to mark the centenary of their famous father’s birth

October 18, 2018 10:39
Top (l-r) Ronit Herzog, Michael Herzog, Suzy Eban, Abba Eban, Isaac Herzog. Bottom (l-r) Aura Herzog, Chaim Herzog
7 min read

From a very young age, both Isaac and Michael Herzog were aware that they were not part of a typical family; that they were, perhaps, the closest thing to an aristocracy that Israel possesses.

Their grandfather, Rabbi Yitzchak HaLevi Herzog, was the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel. And their father, Chaim Herzog, served as a Major-General in the IDF and subsequently as Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations before becoming Israel’s sixth president, a position he held for a decade.

Isaac, better known as “Bougie”, is named after his grandfather, who died a year before he was born. “I remember a kindergarten teacher telling me off for misbehaving, and telling me ‘you cannot behave like that as the grandson of the Chief Rabbi.'

“We were a family very exposed to the public; we were overwhelmed by it many times, and we have lived as a public family all our lives.”