Mr. World: Oren Nahari, the only interviewer I feared

Last Saturday, Oren Nahari said goodbye to the listeners of his program "Saturday with Oren Nahari" on Kan Reshet Bet. It was a farewell that was difficult to listen to. Nahari, who is dealing with ALS, told his listeners that the disease is progressing rapidly and that his voice is fading. Speech, which served him as a work tool for decades, has become increasingly difficult, and therefore he was forced to part with the studio and the microphone.

Within his personal and painful farewell words was one sentence that captured his professional essence in my eyes. He said that he always tried to respect his audience as a public "that deserves depth, not just headlines." It is hard to think of a more accurate description of Oren Nahari.

About 24 years ago, I was invited to my first television interview on "Seeing the World" ("Roim Olam"), the legendary program of David Witzthum and Oren Nahari. Prof. Shlomo Avineri, one of the giants of political thought in Israel, also participated in the discussion. I had every reason to be nervous, but I was not afraid of Witzthum or Prof. Avineri. I was afraid only of Oren.

I remember well the thought that crossed my mind: what would happen if he asked me a question I wouldn't know how to answer? What would happen if he took the conversation to a place I had no idea about? This fear did not stem from dread of the interviewer. He was always kind, curious, and generous toward his interviewees. I feared him for a completely different reason: I knew how much he knew.

At the end of the filming, Oren approached me, said he was happy to meet, and added that we would surely meet and hear from each other again. He kept his word. Over the 24 years that have passed since, he interviewed me again and again: on "The International Hour," in his television programs, in the podcasts he hosted, and finally on "Saturday with Oren Nahari." One thing did not change all those years. He remained the only interviewer I feared.

Oren was a walking globe. Not an encyclopedia of facts and details, but a man who understood how the world connects. History, international relations, diplomacy, politics, culture, religion, literature, and science met in him into one broad picture. He knew how to take an event that happened this morning and place it within processes that began decades and sometimes hundreds of years earlier, and explain why what is happening far from here also concerns us.

Therefore, an interview with Oren never felt like an interview, but rather like a meeting of minds. You arrived at the studio as an expert in a certain field and found before you a man who had read, studied, and knew the context. His questions were not intended just to extract answers. They forced you to think.

In a media era where speed often replaces knowledge, and a headline replaces context, Oren insisted on depth. He believed that the public is capable of dealing with complexity and deserves it. He never spoke to his listeners and viewers from above, but he also never lowered the world to the height of a headline. And in that, his contribution was even greater.

He took the Israeli public out of its intellectual "Pale of Settlement." Israel is a country that is naturally very preoccupied with itself, and sometimes it seems to us that the world begins at the northern border and ends at the southern border. Oren consistently reminded us that there is a big world out there, a world that must be known in order to understand ourselves as well. For decades, he brought distant countries, other histories, forgotten wars, revolutions, cultures, and ideas into homes in Israel.

In his farewell words on Saturday, he asked his listeners to continue to look, listen, ask questions, and not take things for granted. This is not just a farewell request, but the essence of his professional path.

I continue to watch and listen to programs dealing with the world, in Israel and abroad. There are excellent journalists and talented interviewers in Israel, but I do not know anyone else who has that rare combination of breadth and depth, memory and curiosity, knowledge and the ability to tell a story.

After 24 years, I can admit something: I never stopped being afraid to be interviewed by Oren Nahari. And that is the greatest compliment I can give an interviewer.

Oren is, for me, Mr. World. In many ways, he is the world. And I already miss his voice.

The author is a senior research fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute - JPPI, a professor of international relations in the Department of Politics and Government, and head of the Center for European Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.