Larry King comes to Israel, opines on US Jews

TV presenter Larry King is in Israel for his first visit in 20 years.

The 81-year-old arrived as the special guest of the education department in the central Israeli city of Holon. King, who never attended university, will take part in a discussion about the Jewish educational system in the US and the influence of the Jewish lobby on Israel-US relations.

His groundbreaking show, CNN’s “Larry King Live,” went off the air in 2010. He now hosts a web series, “Larry King Now.”

While King grew up in a Modern Orthodox household, he calls himself an atheist. He did appear in a recent Chabad telethon wearing a velvet kippah.

This is not the first time that King has expressed an interest in education. Israeli business daily Globes reported last year that he had teamed up with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to establish the Israel Silicon Valley Chambers of Commerce, in Tel Aviv and at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.