Elli wohlgelernter biography of rory

Avi Mayer left the English-language Israeli newspaper last week, less than a year after he was appointed editor-in-chief despite scant experience in journalism

By Arno Rosenfeld
December 18, 2023

This story was originally published in the Forward.

Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.

When Elli Wohlgelernter worked as a news reporter at TheJerusalem Post in the 1990s, he barely knew the names of the people who worked in the advertising department.

“There was no contact with the business side,” he recalled. “It didn’t affect your thinking or reporting or anything.”

That began to change after Israeli businessman Eli Azur purchased the venerated English-language publication in 2004, according to six current and former Jerusalem Post employees.

One of those employees, who was hired after Azur’s purchase, said they learned while working on an article that the main subject had paid to be profiled and demanded changes be