Rinu Tzror

Rinu Tzror is an Israeli journalist, editor, radio and television presenter, and documentary filmmaker. Over several decades he worked across newspapers, magazines, television, and radio, developing a journalistic style that combines investigation, personal storytelling, and social observation. Again and again, his work has focused on people and communities outside the center of attention: residents of Israel’s periphery, older people, the poor, evacuees, and citizens confronting social inequality. In doing so, he helped broaden the boundaries of the Israeli story and gave greater public space to voices that had often been pushed aside.

Early Work: Literature, Journalism, and Editing

Tzror was born on August 25, 1953, to a family of Libyan Jewish background. His father was killed in a road accident, and Tzror grew up in Ramat Gan. After attending the Dvir high school, he transferred to an external secondary school. He served in the Israel Defense Forces’ Paratroopers Brigade and later worked at an institution for youth in trouble with the law. That experience deepened his acquaintance with social hardship and with young people living at the margins of society.

He began his literary career by publishing stories in the journal Proza, where he also served as a staff coordinator. In 1978, he published the short-story collection Triko. He entered journalism in 1973 at HaOlam HaZeh. The movement between literary and journalistic writing would remain characteristic of his work: his ability to convey a human story through detail, character, and voice made his reports and investigations more than straightforward news coverage.

Shaping Israeli Journalism

Tzror was among the founders of the newspaper Hadashot and became one of its senior editors. He edited the local newspaper Ha'Ir and wrote a political column for it. He also worked as an editor at Ma'ariv during the period of Robert Maxwell’s acquisitions, edited the magazine Anashim in the early 1980s, and served as deputy editor of Monitin, where he worked with Adam Baruch and Meir Agassi. In the early 1990s, he edited the renewed weekly HaOlam HaZeh, following Rafi Ginat.

From 1999 to 2000, he edited the current-affairs magazine Ulpan Shishi on Israel’s Channel 2. These positions placed him at the heart of Israeli journalism during a period when the ways people consumed news, politics, and culture were changing rapidly. As an editor, he did more than select headlines and construct issues and programs. He helped shape agendas and create room for stories that did not always receive commercial or political attention.

Television as a Platform for Marginalized Voices

Tzror created and directed several documentaries, including Beit She'an: A War Film, co-directed with Doron Tsabari and awarded an Ophir Prize, as well as Children of the Revolution, Young Women’s Prayer, I Am the Lord, and Jews, for the Third Time. His films and programs used documentary storytelling to explore the relationship among faith, identity, statehood, and society.

On the Channel 10 program Din VeCheshbon, Tzror traveled throughout the country and sought to bring Israel’s social and geographic peripheries to the screen. The program won the Israeli Academy of Television award for best current-affairs and investigative program in 2003 and 2004. One of the most prominent examples of his work was his sustained coverage of the condition of evacuees from Gush Katif during and after the disengagement. The episode Young Women’s Prayer, broadcast after the evacuation of the Gaza Strip communities, received particular recognition and was later developed into a documentary film.

In 2006, Tzror replaced Dov Elbaum as host of the interview program Hotsa Israel on Israel Educational Television. He presented the program until 2010 and won the Israeli Academy of Television award for best talk or interview program twice. In 2009, he also began hosting Documentary with Rinu Tzror, a program devoted to documentary filmmaking. In 2010, he left both programs and Israel Educational Television to edit the investigative program 360, which began broadcasting in early 2011 on the Channel 2 franchise Reshet. Tzror created the program together with Ram Landes.

Radio, Society, and Israeli Memory

Alongside his work in television and print, Tzror presented radio programs and wrote a weekly column, Din VeCheshbon, for the weekend supplement of Ma'ariv. He hosted the Saturday-night program Walking at Midnight until the end of May 2015. He also presented a daily hour-long program on Army Radio, focusing mainly on social and economic issues. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, his program and that of Razi Barkai were temporarily combined; in 2021, the programs resumed separate broadcasts.

Tzror received the Israel Army Radio Commander’s Award three times. In 2009, he won in the broadcast-events category for Atref Piyyutim: From the Synagogue to Rock ’n’ Roll. In 2010, he won in the current-affairs category for Ma Bo'er — The Social Project. In 2012, he received the award in the army and security category for And the Dreamer Fell Wounded, a program built around a personal return to the experiences of the Yom Kippur War.

His journalism and documentary work have repeatedly addressed inequality among citizens, poverty, the treatment of older people, and life in Israel’s periphery. In later years, he also examined parallels between contemporary Israeli society and earlier periods of Jewish sovereignty, especially the First and Second Temple eras. In his essay The Third Sovereignty Has Lost Control, he compared the ancient sovereignties with the modern State of Israel and presented Jewish history as a source of memory, warning, and responsibility in the present.

Books, Documentary, and Jewish-Israeli Culture

In 2011, Tzror edited Adam Baruch, Communication, together with Moran Shub and Shira Avied. In 2012, he published Black: The Life and Death of Zohar Argov, an extensive investigative account of one of the most influential singers in Israeli culture. The book examined not only Argov’s public image but also the social and cultural environment that made him a symbol, as well as the tension between public success, social marginality, and personal cost.

His film I Am the Lord, screened in 2014, examined the faith of Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria, the renewed fervor surrounding the construction of a Third Temple, and the danger of a return to idolatry. In 2017, Jews, for the Third Time summarized his comparison between Israel’s present-day independence and the periods of independence during the First and Second Temple eras. Both films express his continuing interest in the relationship among sovereignty, religion, Jewish identity, and historical responsibility.

In 2018, Tzror curated the exhibition I Am Adam, Bedridden at the Beit Sturman Museum in Ein Harod, a tribute to Adam Baruch marking the tenth anniversary of his death. The exhibition presented 19 short pieces Baruch wrote during a hospital stay, accompanied by works by leading Israeli artists. It connected journalism, literature, art, and personal memory, and continued Tzror’s professional and cultural relationship with one of the defining figures of Israeli journalism.

At the beginning of 2021, his book Family Name was published by the Library for Communication. His written and filmed work continues to follow the same central path: observing real people, communities, and tensions within Israeli society, while asking how history and Jewish identity live within everyday life.

Public Recognition

In 2013, Tzror was chosen to light a ceremonial torch at the central Independence Day ceremony marking Israel’s 65th anniversary on Mount Herzl. The committee explained that he was connected to the heritage of Jewish and Israeli journalism and that, through his radio broadcasts and the films he directed and produced, he gave voice to citizens who felt themselves to be at the margins of Israeli society. The committee also emphasized his role in bringing difficult human dilemmas and painful social problems to the surface.

In 2019, he received the Sokolov Award. The judges cited his decades-long commitment to placing a social agenda at the forefront of journalistic work, with particular attention to Israel’s social, political, and geographic periphery. The recognition captures the substance of his contribution: he did not merely describe Israeli reality; he worked to change the point from which society sees itself.

Why Rinu Tzror’s Legacy Belongs in Moreshet

Rinu Tzror merits inclusion in Moreshet because his contribution is evident both in the body of his work and in the voices he brought into public view. As a journalist, editor, and filmmaker, he documented Israeli communities, struggles, and memories. As an editor and broadcaster, he influenced how news and social stories reached the public. As a documentary creator, he examined the relationship among Jewish faith, sovereignty, identity, and history.

His films, programs, books, and exhibitions preserve important chapters of Israeli culture and allow future generations to encounter people and experiences that are not always recorded at the centers of power. Moreshet.com presents his story as part of Israel’s journalistic, cultural, and social heritage — a heritage in which public responsibility also means listening to people at the margins, preserving their memory, and making their stories part of the shared story.