Michael Starr (photo from Michael Starr)
Canadian Michael Starr, who joined the Jerusalem Post in 2021, started a new position last month: that of legal correspondent.
Starr was born and raised in Toronto, but has a B.C. connection. His parents, Steven Starr and Iris Green-Starr, both doctors, moved the family to Victoria, where they still live, “because it is a lovely place and there is more nature there.” It was in Victoria that Starr attended high school.
Starr made aliyah at the age of 18 and joined the Israel Defence Forces later in the year, at the age of 19, serving in the infantry from 2009 to 2012.
“I grew up in a religious and Zionist household, and Israel was a large part of my cultural heritage,” he told the Independent about why he made aliyah. “My grandmother was born in Israel and my grandfather served in the Haganah and IDF. Further, there comes a time in every young man’s life in which he needs to leave his father’s home and put himself in a new environment to truly allow him to become himself.”
His brother, Joseph, came in 2012 and served in the Israeli army; today, he is in the Canadian military. Starr’s younger brother, Sam, is currently part of the IDF’s Golani Brigade.
Starr received a bachelor’s degree, majoring in government studies, and a master’s in terrorism and counterterrorism operations from Reichman University in Herzliya. (Reichman is Israel’s first and only private university, founded in 1994 as the IDC or Interdisciplinary Centre, a private college, before being rebranded in 2021.)
When a friend mentioned that there was a job opening at the Jerusalem Post, he applied and got the job.
“I never set out to be a journalist,” he said. “My interests are security and diplomacy.”
In March of 2021, he started writing for the Jerusalem Post magazine and the Post itself. From March 2020 through December of last year, he was on the breaking news desk.
“When the legal affairs correspondent position opened up, the end of November, I accepted because I wanted to be a journalist and it was a promotion, a step up,” he said. “I also like writing and this would be an opportunity to do more.”
On Jan. 1, Starr started that new position, “where I am reporting on the judicial reforms, which are not just one proposal but many different provisions. It was lucky I studied international law; this is a new field for me.”
Although Starr admits, “I’m a bit of a workaholic,” he runs for enjoyment and takes long walks.
Sybil Kaplan is a Jerusalem-based journalist and author. She wrote Witness to History: Ten Years as a Woman Journalist in Israel, set against the history of Israel in the 1970s, and Hatzaad Harishon, A “First Step” Love Story, relating her experiences as the first youth leader of the first black Jewish youth group in New York. She has edited/compiled nine kosher cookbooks and is a food writer for North American Jewish publications.