The Luck Of The Irish

Isaac Herzog, the opposition leader and the Zionist Union candidate for prime minister, is hoping there is some significance to the fact the Israeli election will be held on March 17, St. Patrick's Day.

His father, Chaim Herzog, the sixth president of Israel, was born in Northern Ireland. And his grandfather and namesake, Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, was the chief rabbi of Belfast, Northern Ireland, from 1916 to 1919, when he moved to Dublin and became the chief rabbi of Dublin and then all Ireland until 1936.  He was known as "the Sinn Fein rabbi."

Bougie, as he's known, is 54 and was born in Tel Aviv.  He is a major in the Israeli Army reserves and a lawyer. His father, also a lawyer, was a general in the IDF, the military attaché in Washington and ambassador to the United Nations before serving as president from 1983 to 1993.

Rabbi Herzog emigrated to Palestine in 1936 and succeeded Abraham Isaac Kook as Ashkenazi chief rabbi of British Mandate Palestine.

Like Bibi Netanyahu, Boojie Herzog lived in the United States and went to school here.  He attended the Ramaz School in New York while his father was at the UN; he also attended Cornell University and New York University.  He has a law degree from Tel Aviv University.  Bibi has an MBA from MIT.