Germany’s Jewish Miss Internet wears her Zionism on her sleeve

From the moment Miss Germany contestant Tamar Morali wished the Israeli people a good evening in Hebrew, she’s been swamped with fan mail describing how she touched viewers around the world.

The deluge of positive feedback came as a surprise to the 21-year-old college student at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, who just one year ago had no aspirations to be a beauty queen and didn’t even know what a pageant entailed.

But even though the scope of people’s reactions was a bit of a shock for Morali, proclaiming her Jewish identity was never a question. It is a non-negotiable part of her narrative — and telling it was one of the main reasons Morali signed up for the pageant in the first place.

“I just thought, it’s an amazing opportunity to show people who you are, and it’s a really good platform to just talk,” Morali told The Times of Israel.

Born in the small German city of Karlsruhe to Israeli parents, Morali moved to Vienna at age 8, where she spent her formative years. After coming to Israel for a gap year program, she decided to remain in the country to pursue her studies.

Everything changed for her last year when at the urging of a friend she started a family fashion blog on Instagram, and suddenly Morali found herself at the center of the fashion world.

Morali made headlines for being the first Jewish woman to make it as far as she did in the Miss Germany contest, where she was one of 22 finalists to compete for the crown on February 24. Though it turned out that there was previously a Jewish winner of a completely different Miss Germany contest, Morali didn’t bat an eyelash, insisting that at least as far as identity goes, it isn’t a competition.

The Times of Israel caught up with the beauty queen — who currently holds Germany’s title for Miss Internet — during a break between classes, as she took a few minutes out from preparing for an upcoming exam to talk about her mission, her identity, and the odds of being the next Gal Gadot. The conversation, punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter, has been edited.

So you’re between classes, and you’ve got an exam in a couple hours. What are you majoring in?

I’m majoring in business and communications. I want to go in a lot of directions – that’s why I chose communications. It’s so open-ended, you know? You can go into TV, or work in the radio, be a journalist. I want to do something that has to do with speaking because I love talking and being a representer. I’m about to graduate and then I have every door open.

Are you planning on staying in Israel after that, or are you going to return to Europe?

That’s the hardest question. I love Israel. I haven’t really experienced working life here because I’ve been a student — I did a few odd jobs here and there, but I don’t really know how it is to work in Israel. So far I’ve had a good time here and I love the country, and it’s one of the best decisions I made in my life to come here. Until I got here four years ago, I’d been here just to visit my family, because my family lives here – my aunt, my cousins, my grandma. Pretty much everyone. In Vienna, where my parents and my siblings live, we don’t have any other relatives.

You’re very outspoken about your Jewish and Israeli identities in the public sphere. Can you tell us a little bit about the role they play in your life?

I grew up in Germany keeping kosher and Shabbat. We were a mixture of traditional and religious. But it was really hard for us to keep kosher there, because there was no kosher supermarket, and they had no Jewish school — and my parents really wanted us to not only speak in Hebrew, but also to read and write, and it was very hard for us to find a Jewish education.

So my parents decided to move to Vienna, where the community was much bigger, and we went to a Jewish school, and I went to the B’nei Akiva youth group. I was a leader in B’nei Akiva since I was 14, so I’ve always had a sense of Zionism within me, and I always dreamed of coming to Israel. When you live in Europe, especially, Israel is really the destination for life.

So I decided to come to Israel at the age of 17, and I did a gap year program where I volunteered with an army course for two months, and then with Save a Child’s Heart, and I volunteered in a kibbutz — like all those kinds of things, traveling around Israel for 10 months. And then I found out about IDC because my program offered a presentation here on campus, and that’s the first time I realized that you can actually study in English in Israel. And then this whole competition thing happened.

It sounds like you’ve been more focused on Zionism and less on beauty pageants. How did you get into them?

It’s a funny story. Everything started about a year ago when a friend of mine recommended that I do something related to fashion and lifestyle, because I’ve always had a passion for it. So I decided to start a fashion blog on Instagram, and I called it Morali Fashion. But then I got the idea to really make it a family fashion blog, and I started posting some photos of us together. All of a sudden people in Vienna wanted us for magazines, to model for an Italian brand… people really liked it, the idea of a family blog, and modeling together as a family, which is a completely new thing.

I was asked to join the Vienna fashion show because there was a competition every year called the Look Style Awards where you present your own outfits and vision of designs, and stuff, and I won first place, which is a really big deal because I never thought I would — I mean, when you think you’re competing with so many contestants, what are the chances?

And then when I won, I was asked to join a beauty pageant in Austria, but because I’m a German citizen, I couldn’t. I didn’t really like the idea of beauty pageants, because I always heard the same thing as everyone else — that it’s always about what you look like, and you have to be a specific height and body type, but it’s not like that at all. I did some research, and I really tried to figure out what it is, especially in Germany, because a lot of people don’t know, but beauty pageants are different in every country.

And then you got the idea to apply in Germany?

Yeah, there were all these categories, and you have to win a category to get into the main competition. So I applied to be Miss Internet, since I was so far away, and I won with over 18,000 votes.

My story that I told for the final competition was about me being the first Jewish participant. Many people asked me why I would want to participate in Germany, and a few people were like, “Wait, there are Jews living in Germany?” All of a sudden I realized what a huge responsibility and what a huge role I had without even realizing. People from all over the world messaged me, like, “Wow, this is amazing,” and it just went so fast — like I didn’t even realize how fast it was. Within 48 hours the story was just everywhere.

So the story was that you were the first Jewish one, but then it turns out you were the second Jewish one. Did you speak with the other Jewish Miss Germany, Valeria Bystritskaia?

So it’s funny, because she wasn’t part of the Miss Germany competition. They’re two different contests, and I don’t know anything about hers, and I was actually very happy that she could also reveal that she was Jewish. I’m not trying to fight about who is the first Jewish one — like, it wasn’t my intention at all. I’m happy that she won her thing and that she could be proud of who she is and where she’s standing now.

You say you have a mission.

My mission is to stand for up who you are. In the pageant itself, they didn’t ask me about my religion. I was the one who opened up about my religion because it’s so important to me. It was me that decided what my passion is, and then so many people loved it. And I think that people should never hide. They should just be who they are, and go for what they believe and what they dream. And even if they think it won’t make a difference, they can’t know that.

I had a lot of interviews in Israel about this topic, because I was always compared to — you know Gal Gadot, maybe?

Uh huh.

So, the funny thing is that we both started out pretty much the same. Like, she was also studying in IDC, and she was also in a beauty pageant, and I didn’t know any of this until the Israeli interviewers asked me what I think about it. And they were like, “Don’t forget about us!”

I think that’s exactly what it is — so many people don’t believe that they can be an inspiration for so many other people.

Do you think you’ll be the next Wonder Woman?

I don’t know, but I think it’s just a big honor for me that this impacted so many people. In the beauty pageant we had a video where we had to introduce ourselves. And I chose to open my video with “Erev tov, Yisrael” [Good evening, Israel]. And so many people in Israel watched it, and they wrote me these touching letters about how they got goosebumps, and they cried, and then I realized how big this was. That a 21 year old in a beauty pageant changed this idea that beauty only comes from the outside, because so much of what I spoke about was about beauty coming from the inside. And then I got so much support from Israel, and I kept getting good feedback, and I knew that something I was doing was right.