Miss Israel 2017 Rides Social Media Savvy To Crown
Image by Instagram
To become the Jewish state’s reigning beauty queen, Rotem Rabi first had to conquer the internet.
The 21-year-old Jerusalem-based model won the coveted Miss Israel crown and sash Tuesday with the help of an army of online supporters.
“I want to thank all of you for the kindness and support I received from you,” Rabi wrote Wednesday on Facebook and Instagram. “Appreciate it and love you very much!”
Her social media savvy helped Rabi beat out 15 contestants. This was the first year online voting was combined with judges’ votes to pick Miss Israel, and social media was central to the contest. Each contestant was given profile pages on the contest’s website, complete with bios, photos and Instagram-inspired modeling videos.
While her competitors waged similar get-out-the-vote efforts on social media, they could not compete with Rabi’s reach. Her Instagram following alone topped 14,000 — more than double that of any of the other women who made the final four.
As for Rabi, she took to social media, too, after her victory.
“I write this post with tears of excitement,” she wrote. “For after a long journey and an amazing experience, today came the big moment.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
