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Michael Kagan played a role in transforming the state through his varied ventures as a scientist, entrepreneur, poet, documentarian, playwright, teacher, and more.
By ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN NOVEMBER 18, 2024 04:32
MICHAEL AND his wife, Ruth Gan Kagan (couple at R on couch), with their children and grandchildren.
(photo credit: Courtesy Michael Kagan)
Michael Kagan made aliyah in 1977 to a “third world” Israel of three million Jews, where no one had telephones and no highways crisscrossed the country. He played a role in transforming the state through his varied ventures as a scientist, entrepreneur, art photographer, author, poet, documentarian, playwright, teacher, and practitioner of holistic Judaism.
One documentary Kagan produced was Tunnel of Hope, the little-known story of a hand-dug 208-meter tunnel in Novogrudok, Belarus, through which 220 Jews escaped a Nazi labor camp in 1943. One of those escapees was his father, Jack, who eventually made his way to England.
Jack had two surviving first cousins, both living in Israel, so the family (including Kagan’s second-generation British mother) visited Israel annually. He still remembers one cousin, a colonel in the IDF, coming to meet them at the airplane in an army jeep.
“I grew up with Israel very much in my awareness and experience,” Kagan says. “As a boy in England, I was kicked, spat upon, and cursed for being Jewish. At 10, I told my best friend I was going to live in Israel when I grew up. It was obvious to me that if I was in a country that doesn’t want me, I should live in a country that does want me.”
Coming to Israel
After high school in 1973, he came to Israel on the Weizmann Institute summer science program, and then worked on an archaeological dig outside Tiberias. During the Yom Kippur War, he volunteered in a tank factory, and then on a kibbutz.
While pursuing his first degree in chemistry, Kagan founded Student Action for Israel and participated in several Jewish Agency training programs in Israel. The day after graduating, he was on his way to Jerusalem.
“For me, coming to Israel was going to the goldene medina. It’s always been the place of opportunity, and it still is.”
Hoping to fill gaps in his Jewish knowledge, Kagan registered for classes at the Pardes Institute, where he met his Israeli first wife. “We were the first married couple that came out of Pardes, and I guess the first divorced couple out of Pardes, too,” he says, wryly.
As a research scientist at Teva, Kagan helped develop its inaugural generic drug, a form of vitamin D3. Then he left to study for a PhD in chemistry at Hebrew University. During the 1980s, he married another Sabra, Ruth Gan, and did post-docs at Hebrew University and Brandeis University.
And then he had a spiritual crisis. “I had learned Torah but lost sight of God,” Kagan says.
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The process of reconnecting with God led him away from conventional Judaism through new-age spirituality, to Kabbalah and the development of what he calls “holistic Judaism,” which he defines as “integrating Judaism not only through the mind and intellect but also through the body and spirit.”
Returning to Israel, he followed his father’s example by pursuing interests in inventing and entrepreneurship. In parallel, he taught at Yakar Jerusalem and Yakar London, as well as leading holistic Judaism workshops in Europe and North America.
In 1993, Kagan and a couple of partners set up one of Israel’s first private incubators, Profile Technology Ventures, which focused on translating promising academic technological research into commercial products. He suggested to Israel’s chief scientist at the time that the government should fund start-ups and run public incubators, which indeed came to fruition.
He has founded several companies, many based on his own inventions. One early example is Nomad IQ.
“We were the first to imagine a hand-held device that knew where you were, and you could use it to hail a cab, order a pizza, or find a friend. But it was ahead of its time; the smartphone wasn’t smart enough yet,” he says.
In 2001, he took his family to Boulder, Colorado, for two years to be close to Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, founder of the Jewish Renewal movement. Ruth received rabbinic ordination there and is the founding spiritual leader of the Nava Tehila music-based prayer community in Baka, Jerusalem.
Kagan’s Holistic Haggadah (Urim, 2004) is used across the world. He’s also written The King’s Messenger: A Parable about Judaism (2013); God’s Prayer: A Sacred Challenge to Humanity (2014), published by Albion-Andalus Books; and a collection of poetry, Beyond Time and Space by EA Books (2013) under his pseudonym, Leon.
In 2004, he participated in the founding of what became BrightSource Energy, the reincarnation of the pioneering solar power company Luz. Currently, he is the co-founder and chairman of Reagenics Research, a pioneer in plant cell molecular harvesting.
IN 2007, Kagan co-founded the Jewish Climate Initiative, which mined Jewish sources for insights and inspiration about the growing awareness of climate change. Its Holy Land Declaration, “in which the three Abrahamic religions declare their commitment to protecting the Earth and our future, has been seen across the globe.”
In 2019, Kagan made an award-winning documentary, The Book of Curses, with Yuri Goroulev. It was based on the Holocaust diary of Benjamin Berkovich, who recorded the horrific events that occurred in Novogrudok, Kagan’s father’s hometown.
Kagan also wrote a play inspired by the diary and his search for what happened to Berkovich, intermingled with his personal experiences growing up in England. “Berkovich writes that for 22 years [from the Balfour Declaration], they had the opportunity to leave and go to Israel but they didn’t. At the age of 22, I did.”
As if all that weren’t enough, Kagan creates art photography. His latest exhibition, “Eternal Beauty,” will be featured in February at the Jerusalem Theatre.
The Kagans have five children and a dozen grandchildren. All live in Israel except for one daughter, currently in London, trying her hand at musical theater.
Having served 18 years in the IDF reserves, Kagan recognizes how the constant existential threat and Israel’s military innovation culture have helped augment the country’s entrepreneurial success, but he believes there’s more to it.
“A Chinese educator who came to an Israeli ed-tech conference witnessed a balagan [chaos] in a high school classroom. Kids were split into groups to do problem-solving, and everyone was shouting questions. He told me, ‘It was fantastic. If only we had that in China!’
“I claim that the balagan in the school system – the very thing others see as the educational system’s weakness – is its strength, an essential part of the creative process. All the shouting and questioning in our crazy, underfunded school system is our creative core, and that allows the army to be what it is and has allowed the Start-Up Nation to emerge,” he says.
“We sometimes pay a price for our balagan. It leads to great inefficiencies and frustration, but also to great success. That’s where our spirit and strength come from, and it’s Jewish to the core.”
After all, he points out, the Passover Seder “is the retelling of our foundational national experience, and it’s based around four questions that we have to ask. That is what it means to be Jewish, and this is what makes the difference.” ■
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