Valk (Walk) Eli (Eliyahu) (20 August 1944, Buinsk, Tatar ASSR) – journalist, diplomat, Zionist and public figure.
Eli Valk was born during wartime evacuation into a family that preserved Jewish traditions and spoke Yiddish at home. His grandfather was a melamed (teacher in a traditional Jewish elementary school). His mother was born in Rēzekne, and his father in Kārsava. His father's brothers had lived in Eretz Israel since the 1930s. His mother, Lyubov Grigoryevna, spent about four years in Eretz Israel and returned to Latvia in 1937, having learned Hebrew fluently.
On 1 May 1945, the family returned to Latvia and settled in Riga. Eli Valk attended various schools in Riga and completed his secondary education at Evening School No. 11. In 1957, Lyubov Grigoryevna Valk first applied for emigration to Israel for herself and her three sons (their father died in 1950), but was refused. In 1962, Valk passed entrance exams to the Riga Medical Institute but was rejected as “politically unreliable” due to the family’s refusal status. He enrolled at the Faculty of Biology at Minsk University but left in 1969 before defending his diploma when the family again submitted documents for repatriation.
Eli Valk immigrated to Israel in 1971 with his wife and daughter, after 14 years of refusals, and settled in Jerusalem. From 1972 to 1973, he studied biochemistry at the Faculty of Basic Medical Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and worked in a biochemistry lab from 1972 to 1974. In 1976, he completed a one-year course on “The Jewish People in the World,” organised by the World Jewish Congress in Tel Aviv.
Starting in 1972, he worked as a news editor for the Russian department of “Kol Yisrael” (Voice of Israel) radio, as he already had a solid command of Hebrew and a good understanding of Israel’s political landscape. From 1972 to 1978, he participated in several Israeli government and Jewish Agency (Sokhnut) projects advocating for Soviet Jews’ right to repatriate to Israel.
From 1979 to 1981, he worked in New York for the World Congress for Soviet Jewry, heading the department for research on Soviet Jewry. Between 1984 and 1990, he was an employee of Lishkat HaKesher (the Liaison Bureau), also known as Nativ, under the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office. This organisation coordinated advocacy for Soviet Jews’ emigration rights. In later years, Valk led Nativ’s information department.
From 1990 to 1992, he worked on a diplomatic mission in Moscow and other cities, including Riga, where he issued repatriation visas and organised seminars. From 1993 to 1996, he served as Israel’s first ambassador to Belarus. From December 1996 to 2000, he headed Nativ’s public outreach department and launched the online journal Israel Today, along with bulletins including the digest News from Israel.
Since 2001, Valk has served as Director-General of the Society for the Study of Jewish Communities, which publishes the Aliyah Library series and the Concise Jewish Encyclopaedia.
Starting from 1962, Eli Valk was an active participant in the Zionist underground. During his refusal years, he maintained secret contact with the Israeli Embassy in Moscow, at great personal risk, receiving and distributing underground materials. He delivered smuggled items such as a typed copy of Leon Uris’s Exodus and the call-to-action Your Language to Minsk. He sought out like-minded individuals who later became leaders of the Jewish movement in Minsk.
In Moscow, at a meeting of Zionist group representatives on 16–17 August 1969, where the creation of the All-Union Zionist Coordination Committee was agreed upon, Valk represented Riga. He signed numerous petitions and letters addressed to international and Soviet authorities demanding the right to emigrate. These appeals were also signed by his courageous mother, Lyubov Grigoryevna.
After arriving in Israel, Eli Valk became deeply involved in public activism. In 1971, he campaigned in the U.S. about the plight of Prisoners of Zion and the struggle for Soviet Jews' aliyah rights. In 1975–1976, he played a leading role in the All-Israeli Union of Soviet Jewish Émigrés, heading its Jerusalem branch. From 1999 to 2005, he was a member of the editorial board of HaUma (“The Nation”), affiliated with the Z. Jabotinsky Association (or possibly V. Jabotinsky?). For several years, the journal was also published in Russian as Our Nation.
Upon joining the Union of Latvian and Estonian Émigrés in Israel, Valk was elected its deputy chairman in 1999 and its chairman in June 2006. Since 2001, he has organised annual trips from Israel to Latvia under the slogan “Roots and Remembrance.” That same year, he initiated the regular publication of the Etzleinu (“With Us”) bulletin.
Valk researched the history of Latvian Jewry, especially the Holocaust period. In 2004, he started serving on the Yad Vashem Public Committee for the designation of Righteous Among the Nations.
Publications:
– Jews and the Jewish People: Petitions, Letters, and Appeals of Soviet Jews, 1967–1970, Jerusalem, 1973.
– Interview by Lev Arkadin in Alef, Tel Aviv, 11 February 2004.
– Article by Girts Kondrats in Latvijas Avīze, Riga, 29 October 2005.
– Levin, E., “And Your Staff in Your Hand,” Jewish Antiquities Online Almanac, 2006, Issues 3(39)–5(41).
Additional Notes :
In the 1980s, Valk published the journal Israel-2000, launched the newspaper Jerusalem News, and oversaw the release of many books on Israel.
His radio broadcasts on Kol Yisrael in Russian and Yiddish were a crucial source of information and moral and political support for many Soviet Jews—especially those in refusal status, prison, or the gulag.
Radio worked closely with Nativ, sharing urgent information about arrests and immediately broadcasting updates. Kol Yisrael was a trusted channel, ensuring accuracy before dissemination and spreading verified information globally—picked up by Voice of America, Radio Liberty, and other international outlets.
Radio was not only a beacon of truth but a lifeline for many.
Valk supported publishing Edward Kuznetsov’s Mordovian Diary after the 1970 “aeroplane affair” trial. He and his colleagues at Nativ were often the first to report human rights abuses against Natan Sharansky, Yosef Mendelevich, and other Prisoners of Zion and refusniks.