“Hadas Kuznits.”
If you’ve listened to KYW over the last 22 years, you’ve surely heard her name. She covered the Eagles’ Super Bowl win, the pope’s visit and countless other events. She won two Edward R. Murrow awards, one for covering a house fire that killed eight children and another for reporting on the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
Except now you no longer hear her name.
In the spring, Kuznits was a victim of the latest round of layoffs at Audacy, KYW’s parent company. She was one of five KYW employees let go among approximately 100 layoffs across the country. Audacy, a Philadelphia-based company, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January due to more than $1 billion in outstanding debt.
Kuznits was shocked when she got the news. But then a thought occurred to her: She could finally return to her native Israel.
This August, she will.
“Because I’m able to support myself with severance pay, I figured I could live anywhere this year,” she said. “The goal is to be there for a full year.”
Kuznits will live on Kibbutz Bahan near Netanya on Israel’s west coast. Her husband, Dan Reinherz, and their three sons, Geffen, 11, Axel, 9, and Mikko, 7, will join her.
The boys will get to experience Shavuot and Simchat Torah. They will also be off from school for Rosh Hashanah instead of Christmas. Kuznits said she’s not a religious Jew, but she wants her kids to understand their identity.
“I want them to understand what it means to be Jewish,” she said.
Since Kuznits was born in Israel, she’s a dual citizen of the Jewish state and the U.S. Her sons have been able to get their citizenship as her direct descendants. Dan Reinherz is an American Jew, but he can stay for up to 90 days at a time with his U.S. passport.
Reinherz has to return to the U.S. anyway to check on their real estate properties, according to Kuznits. The husband is making it work to help his wife.
“I need a little spiritual uplifting,” she said.
Kuznits immigrated to the U.S. with her family when she was 2. She returned to Israel in 11th grade for half a year with Akiba Hebrew Academy, now the Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy.
After high school, she went back to Israel to serve in the army. During her service, she lived on Kibbutz Bahan.
The Israeli called her former host family after she got laid off. They knew a family that was leaving for a year and renting out its house.
“It’s like a full circle moment for me,” Kuznits said.
The reporter will also document her journey on her YouTube channel and Instagram page, Hadas On Air. She wants to show her home country to her audience in the U.S.
“There’s a lot of people who say all kinds of things about what’s going on in Israel,” Kuznits said. “They haven’t seen that the street signs are in Hebrew, Arabic and English, and that there is no apartheid.”
Kuznits also thinks that people consume YouTube like they once consumed radio.
“Back in the day, people used to tell me all the time that they listened to me in the car or in the shower or as they were cooking. I think nowadays people listen to YouTube that way,” she explained.
She’s also hoping that at least a portion of KYW’s audience will follow her.
“It’s important for people to see what it’s like from someone they know. People told me they feel like they know me because I talked to them in their cars for 22 years. You have a friend to show you around,” she said.
The longtime KYW reporter never got a chance to sign off.
“I never got a chance to say goodbye to the audience, to the listeners, to the people I was in contact with for 22 years. I didn’t get a chance to say thank you to the Delaware Valley,” she said. “I really felt sad. But it really isn’t goodbye. It’s ‘See you later.’”
