Tamar Morali became a media sensation when she entered the Miss Germany contest and won the Miss Internet category and made waves as she became known as the first Jewish contest to make it into the finals of the pageant. This gained the Israeli-German a lot of attention who has since embarked on a series of projects. The 23-year-old quickly became a popular voice among young Jews (and not only) by hosting the Jewrovision contest and speaking at the German Israel Congress. She and her siblings (she has two brothers and two sisters) are growing social media stars, with many young people following and engaging with them. Slowly, but steadily, Tamar is becoming a new star and will very likely be one of the big names in popular culture as we move in the 2020s. Her vision is also a fresh one, as Tamar is openly talking about how important it is for the young generation of today to celebrate who they are but to also connect with everyone else and to experience life first-hand.
Tamar’s rise to popularity started when she won a styling contest organized by a magazine in Vienna, Austria. Even though at the time she was down on herself, she decided to participate in order to step out of her comfort zone. The fact that she could apply online was of great help, as she was able to still keep a distance and still take the risk. “If it would have been a live casting, I don’t know if I would have went” she says. “When I was on stage, I thought ‘this is my chance to prove to myself that I can do more than I think I can’ – and then I won. However, I didn’t make a big deal out of it because I thought it was a small competition, but the truth of the matter is that you never know who is watching you” she explains. After the contest, someone who heard that she was living in Germany recommended her to participate in the Miss Germany beauty contest and the rest is history.
When remembering her participation in the pageant, Tamar recalls “the story was published all over the world within 48 hours […] and since then I’ve been constantly on the road, talking about my journey and meeting many people in the fashion industry. It’s amazing to have a platform on which you can share your thoughts and beliefs with people around the world.”
For Tamar, keeping an open dialogue is crucial. She often talks about how for her, both Germany and Israel are her home and how she sees herself as both Israeli and German – a contradiction that many people from past (and present) generations would have been fearful of for all the right reasons. And that is the idea behind her message, namely that things can change for the better and that things can reenter a normal path. Probably one of the reasons why Tamar’s story has been so mediatized among different Jewish communities and especially in Israel was because it spoke to a very sensitive topic in the Jewish world, namely the idea of associating being German with being Jewish. The echoes of the horrors of WWII are still impacting the Jewish world and presenting an image of a young girl who is trying to make being German and Jewish a normal thing is sure to draw a lot of eyes.
To her surprise, not only were some Israelis circumspect about her being so vocal about being German, but many of her German acquaintances were asking her whether living in Israel is not dangerous, given the many conflicts in the region. That is part of why Tamar is an image of a generation, as she divides her life between different countries and cultures and manages to make it all somehow work for her. Surely, Israeli culture is very open these days and, according to Tamar, most Israelis have a positive outlook on the future relations between their country and Germany, despite the news of a new wave of Western anti-Semitism that is coming from all over. Tamar herself also claims that she was never the target of anti-Semitic sentiment in Germany.
The attention Tamar received from participating in the pageant and the numerous TV interviews and projects she did have helped her come out of her shell and gain confidence, which was something she was lacking as a child and teenager. “I think that everything has changed for me”, she says. “In the beginning, I did not know how to handle it, but nowadays I can stand in front of 4000 people and host a show and not be as nervous as I was when I was back in school and had to give a presentation and was shaking and scared of people’s reaction. Today, I feel much more confident – I learned that everything is in your mind and that you can really train yourself to be yourself and to be confident in who you are. A lot has also changed in my private life and my family’s life, but I am happy that I can balance everything. While I do want to pursue my dream, I still want to be well-educated. I’m thinking about pursuing a second degree.” While Tamar’s first degree was in Communication and Media Studies, which landed her a few jobs in advertising and media, for her second degree, Tamar is thinking of studying Fashion Design as she is planning on launching her own fashion business in the near future. But that is still to come.
At the moment, Tamar is engaged in a conversation with the youth of today about the importance of understanding that there is a difference between the “real” world and the world we see on the screens in our hands, a topic that is indeed an important one for the teenagers of today. For Tamar, it is essential to “look at people” and understand each other, as social media is turning us more and more into caricatures. On her Instagram, Tamar does focus on stressing the fact that what we know about someone or see in their IG feed is not a complete image of that person and that we should bear this in mind at all times.
As many people of her generation, Tamar is raising an eyebrow not just in regards to social media, but to the news we are bombarded with as well. “It’s just not real”, she claims and adds that no one in her age group is even watching TV. This is why Tamar thinks that our personal experiences are what we should care more about and that that is where the truth lies. In this sense, when she spoke at the 5th Deutscher Israelkongress in Frankfurt am Main in 2018, she wanted to talk about her daily experience as a young Jewish German girl. In many ways, this was a wise choice on her part, as it would not have made much sense for a beauty queen to lecture a room full of politicians and businesspeople on world politics. During her speech she said: “Really fast, I understood that a girl’s dream grew into a woman with a mission – a mission to get people to talk and listen to each other.”
For Tamar, being in close contact and empathizing with people is important. She has dedicated much of her time working with children and volunteering for various organizations. “To give something to the world is for me everything” Tamar explains as she thinks about her time working and playing with small children on Saturdays.
This is how she came in contact with Jewrosvision – a Eurovision-type song contest that went from being a small even held literally in a room to being held in a theater in front of 4000 people and being streamed online. A few years ago, Tamar was volunteering with them (she was in charge of checking whether all the children who were participating were there) and in 2019 she was one of the hosts of the event. It was a big step for Tamar, who recalls “I don’t know what I was feeling: it was amazing, it was scary… the Jewish community was always a part of me and doing this in Germany was amazing. Netta [Barzilai] was also there and it felt again like I was connecting Israel and Germany.” A few weeks later, she met Netta again at Tel Aviv Fashion Week, which brought in a way the experience full circle. Kan (the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation) also broadcast the Jewrovision event.
The fame, as limited as it may be for the moment for Tamar, has also had its downsides, as Tamar has had to learn that often people don’t have all the positive intentions in regards to her. She noticed that many times, journalists would try to force her to say things in interviews that could be quoted out of context and that can lead to a scandal in the media. Little by little, she now learns to deal with all the things that are often unseen or downright hidden. But Tamar has also learned to own her actions and to address herself the issues others may try to turn into negative news. For example, she recalls that during the Miss Germany finale, one of the other girls accidentally stepped on her dress and she fell. On this occasion, the media was kind and the editors of the show did not focus on her falling, but one media article placed a lot of accent on her falling on stage. Now, she has no issue addressing it and is proud of the fact that she was quick on her feet and stood up immediately without crying or showing the tension she was feeling. In the end, the event was broadcast in Israel because of her and her family and friends were watching too, so she did it for them. “I remember my entire body hurt”, she recalls “but I thought that sometimes in life you fall, so you need to get up immediately.”
Also in regards to the night of the Miss Germany finale and the reaction people had to it, she remembers how something of extreme simplicity for her was of great impact for many people watching. During the show, Tamar greeted the audience with “good evening” both in German and in Hebrew, which to her is a normal thing, but many people, especially of the older generation back home in Israel, found that to be a powerful moment. The audience even stood up and clapped. This side-by-side greeting was something many older people did not think could be a normal thing again.
Tamar Morali is humble and tries to inspire people, even though she would never want for others to want to be like her. She is also starting to become connected to the world of Hollywood, having traveled to LA and having met with important people in the business (all under her father’s careful supervision). She giggles when people compare her to Gal Gadot but says that, at least for now, Hollywood is not for her. Maybe, like Gal, she would take on that world once she is a more established woman and has a family. Tamar has set as her goal in her relation to her career to, as she puts it, “be as normal as I possibly can”. Unfortunately, the success she’s had so far has made some people turn against her (some even claimed her success is too much for them to handle), but Tamar is determined not to let others dictate her path and to make the best of what she has built so far.
Tamar is a young girl with grand dreams and enjoys the support of her family, her friends and the professionals she knows. She lives in a world of amazing possibilities, and thus, if taken in the right direction, her ambitions can change the lives of many and turn into fantastic achievements.
Photos: Attire Club
Fraquoh and Franchomme
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