Every month, like clockwork, Rita Semel would get a call from Avraham Biran, Israel’s consul general in Los Angeles. “He would ask me, ‘What have you done for the Jewish people lately?'”
That was back in the early 1950s, when Israel was young and people like Biran, an archaeologist, would join the diplomatic corps simply because no one else was yet available. At the time, there was no consular office in San Francisco; the consul general for the western United States was based in Los Angeles.
Semel, a longtime Bay Area Jewish community activist, says Biran blazed the trail for every consul general to follow. He also went on to become one of Israel’s leading archaeologists, making stunning discoveries at his ongoing dig at Tel Dan, in northern Israel.
Biran, a man who never stopped doing for the Jewish people, died Sept. 16 in Jerusalem. He was 98.
Born in prestate Israel and educated at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Biran will perhaps best be remembered for his archaeological work. For decades he oversaw biblical archaeology at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem. He also served as director of Israel’s Department of Antiquities and Museums.
He made his greatest discovery at Tel Dan in 1993, when he found a ninth-century BCE stone tablet inscribed in Aramaic and making reference to the House
of David.
But Biran’s old friends in the Bay Area remember him best as an affable diplomat who made friends and influenced people to embrace the nascent Jewish state.
When Biran made his first official visit to San Francisco around 1951, Mayor George Christopher arranged for a police escort to meet him.
“Avraham told me he’d never been more embarrassed in his life,” remembers Semel, then a freelance publicist working in the Jewish community.
It didn’t take long for Biran to settle in to his new job. Semel remembers her friend as “very exuberant, warm and gracious, with a great sense of humor. Because Israel was so new, he was able to interpret the country and explain why it was necessary to have a Jewish state.”
Biran’s professional stature opened doors for him that might be closed to other consuls general. He often spoke at local universities, using his passion for biblical archaeology to talk up Israel.
He served a total of three years as a foreign diplomat before returning to Israel, but always retained strong ties to the Bay Area. Local Jewish communal leaders Dan Koshland and Walter Haas helped fund Biran’s work at Tel Dan, and he returned often to see lifelong friends in the region.
“I’ve known every Israeli consul general,” says Semel. “I always said he set the mold for them because he brought so much extra to the job.