In this episode of Yalla, Let's Go!, Erica and Abbey sit down with Yoni Heilman — CEO of TAMID Group, IDF reservist with more than 400 days of miluim since October 7th, and the show's first guest to have made aliyah twice — for a conversation about coming back for good in the middle of COVID, writing from inside the war, and why life in Israel is never just fine: it's either amazing or crisis.
Yoni was born in New York and spent his early years in Israel, leaving him with what he calls bicultural personality disorder: feeling like both a foreigner and a native in both countries. His career has crossed every sector — IDF soldier, US Congressional staffer, Knesset intern, Birthright Israel, a startup — before a group of undergraduates recruited him to run TAMID Group, the nonprofit connecting business-minded students on nearly 60 campuses (20 to 30 percent of them not Jewish) to Israel's startup ecosystem. He opens up about the WhatsApp group he started for his wife on the first night of the war that became SAPIR Journal's Diary of an IDF Soldier, the Columbia chapter president who kept building through the encampments, the summer cohort evacuated by boat, and the check-in agent who invited his family to her Seder the day they left Israel with an expired passport.
Also in the episode:
Making aliyah twice: looking backward the first time, looking forward the second
Why TAMID works: business, not politics — "we're not advocates, we're activists"
Are ambitious students more or less interested in Israel since October 7th?
Not canceling the summer programs: a cohort evacuated by boat, and 130 students who flew in during the war with Iran
"I'm a sharpshooter." "How old are you?" "38." "Okay, take care."
400+ days of miluim and the trap door under his life
Raising kids who will serve in the same army he serves in
What "never again" really means: agency, not just safety
Why Modi'in, why there's no third aliyah coming, and feeling safer in Israel than in America
At 80, looking back: grandchildren for whom Israel will be native
This is a raw, honest conversation about aliyah, service and belonging — and why life in Israel is never just fine.
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