An Open Letter to University Presidents
7 min read
The prominent marketer on the murder of his brother Ari, his career in tech, and how his faith guides him.
Hillel Fuld, a prominent marketer in Israel’s tech sector, has nearly 43,000 Twitter followers and receives hateful antisemitic comments on a daily basis. “I’m probably one of the biggest recipients of antisemitism on Twitter,” said Fuld.
As an observant Jew, it’s important to Fuld to be visibly Jewish online, like frequently posting a picture of himself about to pray, decked out in his tallit and tefillin, with a message: Meeting the CEO one on one to discuss a few important topics.
“When you own something, people respect you for it. There are anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiments out there, but I try to combat the darkness with light.”
Unfortunately, Fuld is familiar with darkness. In 2018, a Palestinian terrorist killed his brother Ari by stabbing him in the back. Ari’s death made international headlines, and he was pronounced a hero for shooting the terrorist after he’d been stabbed, preventing the terrorist from hurting anyone else.
Fuld has been vocal about his brother’s death, writing about it in the media and revealing his mental health struggles throughout the grieving process.
“I’m still coping with it,” he said. “I’m in therapy of course, and I’ve battled depression and trauma. Many people talk about terror victims, but not many people talk about what it does to a family. It’s not easy to ‘get over it.’”
Fuld says that while pain doesn’t go away, it does become more bearable. Leaning on his faith and focusing on the good have helped.
Ari Fuld, third from the left, with his brothers and parents
“Life is like a cup of water and the dirt is garbage we deal with throughout our life,” he said. “You can spend your life trying to remove every particle of dirt but then you’ll never enjoy fresh water. You’ll never enjoy life if you focus on the dirt. Instead, pouring more clean water into the glass, adding more goodness to your life, will eventually get rid of all the dirt that will be replaced by clean fresh water. Focus on adding more goodness to your life and stop focusing on the dirt, the bad. The good will eventually flush out the bad.”
Despite receiving threats for being Jewish, despite losing his brother to terrorism, despite life’s challenges, Fuld is an eternal optimist. He chooses to see the good.
“Hundreds of children around the world have been named after Ari,” he said. “There were Torah scrolls dedicated in his name and shuls built in his name. People all around the world that knew him commemorated him with donations. It’s not a coincidence that when someone dies, you learn how great they were.”
Hillel Fuld was born in Queens, New York, to an Jewishly observant family. Along with Ari, he has three other brothers. His father was the principal at Salanter Akiba Riverdale High School (SAR) in Riverdale, and his mother also worked in Jewish education.
When Fuld was in the sixth grade, his father was given a one-year sabbatical. The family went to Israel and enjoyed living in the country. Just a few years later, when Fuld was 15, his family made aliyah and moved to Jerusalem.
“Because I was here in the sixth grade, I picked up the language quickly,” he said. “I went to a high school with a lot of Americans. It wasn’t easy to come here when I was a teenager, so it took me a while to adjust. I had a pretty soft landing otherwise though.”
From a young age, Fuld knew that he wanted to work in technology. The first time he saw a computer when he was a child, it blew his mind.
“It was so fascinating,” he said. “You could write code and it could turn into something. I pressed a power button and went into an operating system. How did that happen?”
Still, it took some time for Fuld to follow his dream. He went to Bar-Ilan University and studied political science “because I found it to be an interesting topic, and it was easy,” he said. “But I had no direction.”
Someone suggested that after graduating, he should become a technical writer.
“These are the people who write user guides to iPhones that no one reads,” he said.
Fuld wanted to get out of technical writing. But how?
“One day 15 years ago, I was bored out of my mind and started writing about tech on the internet,” he said. “Today we call that a blog. Back then, it wasn’t a thing. I’d write about how to pitch an investor or cover trends that were interesting in tech. Pretty quickly, entrepreneurs started coming to me.”
Through his writing, Fuld grew his network and started making connections between startup founders, investors, and journalists. He had a unique talent that others didn’t possess: He knew how to tell a good story.
“Communications is about subtlety and emotion, which are traits I naturally had,” he said. “Marketing and storytelling are all about subtlety. The word ‘subtlety’ doesn’t exist in the Hebrew language because Israelis aren’t subtle people. I met with startup founders and they talked about algorithms and processors. I said, ‘Dude, no one cares. Pitch it in an emotional, relatable, and compelling way.’ For me, it was second nature.”
Today, Fuld is one of the top tech marketers in Israel. He works with Fortune 500s including Google, Microsoft, and Oracle, flying to Silicon Valley for meetings and helping Israeli-based startups make their mark.
The entrepreneur, who lives in Beit Shemesh, starts his day at 6 a.m., when he has a cup of coffee in bed with his wife Racheli. He then writes a gratitude list and posts it on social media, and does a daily feature on a remarkable person in the Israeli tech world. He switches off between men and women every day, and has posted 680 days in a row. After posting, he says his morning prayers and put up an inspirational message wearing his tallit. If it’s a Friday, he’ll post a short lesson on the weekly Torah portion.
He spends the day sitting in his favorite café in Tel Aviv, sipping on a large cappuccino and working. If he has a lunch meeting, he’ll go to a nearby restaurant with his clients for some steak.
“In Israeli culture, we have meetings over food,” he said.
Fuld works with a range of companies, from banks to startups to nonprofits.
“I only have one criteria when I take on clients: Are they good people?” he said. “That’s all I care about.”
When Fuld goes back home at the end of the day, he spends time with his wife and five children, the center of his world.
The Fulds
No matter where Fuld is or what he’s doing, he makes sure to stick to his Jewish values. He always wears his yarmulke in public and, wherever he is in the world, he finds kosher food. On his social media, he declares to his hundreds of thousands of followers that he’s signing off for Shabbat.
“Some people tell me they started keeping Shabbat and lighting candles because of my posts,” he said. “I’m very proud of my Judaism. I never shy away from it. My Judaism is something I will never compromise.”
Fuld is in a place where he is happy – happy with his career and his home life. His goal? To be able to keep on doing exactly what he’s doing now.
“I have an amazing wife who built a remarkable family, and an amazing community and group of friends,” he said. “I have a career that is my wildest dream I never thought possible. I meet remarkable people every day. My end game is this. I’m living my dream.”
