From blue hair to Bukhara: The restless journey of Ari Kresch

Everyone has a story – and an interesting one. Some are more happy, some more sad, but all are meaningful and fascinating to hear. Some are already out there to be heard, others you would never hear about because the storied people keep it to themselves.

A grandfather-aged man with short, bright blue hair, though – well, he obviously has a story.

I saw such a man at a Jerusalem synagogue on a recent Shabbat morning. Ari Kresch definitely didn’t look “punk,” so I had to take a second look – maybe it was just the way the sky was reflecting on his well-kept manly mane? Nope – his hair was really dyed sky blue!

He was sitting outside on the bench talking to a woman who I later found out is his niece. Besides his colored crop, he seemed like just another guest of the shul. I had to find out more; there’s definitely a story here to hear – about how this guy got “the blues.”

“I’m sure I’m not the first one to ask you this, but what’s up with your blue hair?” I asked, expecting a patriotic nod to the Israeli flag or perhaps allegiance to a favorite sports team.

The answer was disarmingly simple: “For fun,” he said. “It reminds me not to take myself – or life – too seriously. When I see myself in the mirror, it makes me smile – and almost everyone who meets my gaze smiles, too.”

“How long have you had the blue?” I queried incredulously.

“On and off for about five years,” he said.

“What color is it when it’s ‘off’?” I continued probing.

“White.”

“How does it get back to white?”

“It happens naturally. I swim a lot, so the chlorine takes out the color. It kind of fades, getting lighter and lighter blue, and then white again.”

“Why blue, though? A lot of people – mostly women, I think – color their hair with all kinds of colors, sometimes several – pink, orange, purple.”

“There’s really no reason other than to have fun with it,” Kresch chuckled. “People interact with me more playfully – because how can you not smile at somebody who’s got blue hair?” He was right. I smiled, although others I saw smirked in a mildly judgmental way. Most people, though, just let it go without any reaction – from a distance.

At 70, he is, by his own admission, living life with the urgency of someone determined to pack in as many connections, adventures, and acts of discovery as possible.

Kresch has channeled the upheaval of divorce into a kind of purposeful wanderlust – traveling, revisiting his roots, and embracing the people and places that shaped and continue to shape him.

“A lot of people resist aging and want to restore their hair color like it was when they were young,” the blue elder suggested. “For me, it’s just to kind of celebrate my lack of sanity. And when others see me, it helps them to embrace their own lack of sanity – because it really brings out joy in people that wouldn’t otherwise be revealed.”

He didn’t do it for the reactions, though. “It’s really for myself,” he admitted. “When I look at myself in the mirror, it makes me smile.”

Most people are very complimentary about his hair flair and say all kinds of great things. “But then when it goes back to white, they say, ‘It looks so good white – keep it that way!” He’s not really impacted either way, he said.

Kids especially love it, the child-at-heart said. “Kids are the best – I get into long conversations with them. It kind of gives people a certain level of confidence that there’s no rules in life – you can just do what you want to do. Not everybody agrees with that, but okay,” the blue rebel said.

“Sometimes people take themselves a little too seriously. I surely did – and that’s why my hair became white in the first place!”

Kresch’s own children are a lot more conservative than he is. “I like to give permission to my kids to behave in ways that are maybe unconventional – and they obviously have a role model.”

What did his ex-wife think about it? “I started with the blue hair before our divorce. She didn’t exactly like it, but she didn’t discourage it, either – and it wasn’t really a factor.”

The blue Jew spontaneously decided to come to Israel for the wedding of a friend and stayed with his older brother, Simon, and sister-in-law, Rachel, who live in Jerusalem. Their younger brother, Eddie, lives in the capital, and Eddie’s children and grandchildren live across town. Kresch was also fortuitously able to attend the brit milah of a childhood friend’s grandchild, where he ran into at least 10 people he hadn’t seen in up to 40 years. “It felt so natural and comfortable – almost as if we hadn’t missed a beat,” he said.

The trip became more than just family reunion and social calls, however – it was a personal study in resilience. Kresch immersed himself in the rhythms of Israeli life: the relentless dancing in Mahaneh Yehuda, the hum of restaurants along Tel Aviv’s coastline, and the laughter of families enjoying the beach despite the ever-present shadow of terrorism.

“It takes strength, courage, and determination to say no – to pogroms, to terrorism, and to antisemitism,” Kresch reflected. “Though massively outnumbered, this time we’re fighting back. The world isn’t used to that. When we are no longer an easy target, things will change.

“Israel’s always been an important part of my life,” the personally blue-and-white person said.

“It’s also been an important part of my family’s life. I remember after the Six Day War that my father, Ben, who was a Holocaust survivor, wanted nothing more than to see Jerusalem before he died – that was a major priority for him and his children. So, he came right after the war with our mother, Molly [Amalia].”

Both sides of their parents’ families survived World War II as Polish refugees in Siberia and Central Asia, so the trip was a pilgrimage of sorts. In Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara, the brothers discovered that traces of those Jewish communities still stand: functioning synagogues, well-tended cemeteries, and elders who carry the memory of those refugee years.

“These were Sephardi cities that took in a lot of European Ashkenazi Jews like my parents when they had nowhere else to go,” Kresch said. “Because of them, they were all able to survive. Without them, I wouldn’t be here – none of my family would.”

Kresch’s grandmother gave two of her children away to a Jewish Agency operation for orphans because she wanted to ensure the survival of at least some of her kids.

“I had two uncles who were part of the Yaldei Tehran – the ‘Tehran children’ who had escaped from Poland to Iran after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. [The British allowed this group of about 860 children and 100 adults to enter Palestine in February 1943.] My uncles were supposed to go to Palestine as orphans. They didn’t go directly but eventually made it there. Both of them ended up serving with the Hagana resistance fighters before Israel became a state,” he recounted.

“In 1972, we were both in yeshiva,” big brother Simon said. “He was at ITRI – Israel Torah Research Institute in south Jerusalem, near Beit Safafa – and I was at the Mir Yeshiva.”

They naively decided to take a little vacation to Lebanon. “We went up north to Rosh Hanikra,” he said. “At first, we tried to swim across, but we couldn’t do that. Then we went to a kibbutz on the border called Hanita and made some friends there who gave us a place to sleep. We found a breach in the fence and went to Lebanon, figuring we could hitchhike to Beirut.”

But they were dangerously wrong. “We also thought everyone speaks English there, but they didn’t. When we got across, we were captured by the Lebanese army, which kept us up for a couple of days. First, they put us into solitary confinement, then together with some Arab escapees from a prison in Nazareth who had gone to Lebanon in hopes of getting freed by their brethren.”

Arrangements were made with the United Nations, and they were returned to Israel in a couple of days. A harrowing experience for two yeshiva boys that they won’t forget.

From Uzbekistan, Kresch traveled to Beijing for a different kind of reunion – this time with Jiawei (Jaway) Wang, a young woman who had lived in his home in Farmington Hills, Michigan, as a Chinese high school exchange student in 2005. She became almost like an adopted daughter in addition to his five daughters. They spent three days together in the Chinese capital catching up, meeting her friends, and visiting her workplace.

“I’ve called him Dad for 20 years,” Wang said. “I’m grateful for his recent visit to Beijing and for the way he always welcomes me to his home. We talk about anything and everything, and I cherish the time we share. I’m thankful that through the many seasons of life, we’ve stayed close and deepened our bond.”

While his passport has been in busy use in recent years, Kresch’s home base is a place where he would never have imagined living.

“I never dreamed I could live on the beach in this lifetime,” he said. “But eight years ago, my then-wife, Lynn, and I moved to Puerto Rico. Our youngest daughter, Tessa, who was then in 10th grade, graduated high school there, and it turned out to be the greatest educational and life experience for her – and for us as parents.”

About a thousand miles (1,700 km.) southeast of Miami after the Bahamas, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic, the Caribbean island and unincorporated US territory of Puerto Rico offered something rarely found in the mainland United States: an absence of the sharp generational divide. “I got to know my daughter’s friends in a way that felt natural and connected,” he said. “It’s a community where young people interact with adults in a very open, respectful way.”

That experience, Kresch believes, helped shape Tessa’s path. She was selected as the student speaker for her Michigan State University graduation in December 2024 and is now an on-air news reporter in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “She’s probably one of the youngest on-air reporters in the country,” he said with pride.

His other daughters are equally accomplished, despite taking a more traditional American educational path. Each spent a year abroad, a choice their father encouraged as part of his belief that immersion in other cultures builds resilience and perspective. One went to Chile; the others went to Thailand, Costa Rica, and Puerto Rico.

“Puerto Rico is the Jew-friendliest place I’ve ever lived,” the island man said. “When the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre happened, both Jews and non-Jews showed up to protest.”

As this story goes to press, Kresch is in the Philippines, where he employs a virtual assistant and 10 call center agents for his law firm. His days are a mix of managing business, meeting people, and exploring yet another culture.

“I miss many aspects of married life,” he said candidly. “But when one door closes, another opens.”

Asked if he’d ever consider marrying again, he paused and smiled. “If I can find someone who can keep up – and put up with me.”

From blue hair in a Jerusalem synagogue to the back streets of Bukhara, from beachfront mornings in Puerto Rico to business calls in Manila, Ari Kresch’s life is a tapestry woven from curiosity, memory, and connection.

He is a man who embraces connection, love, authentic communication, and reinvention – not as a reaction to loss but as a proactive way of living. “You can let life narrow you down,” he said, “or you can keep going through open doors and opening others, even when they don’t lead where you expect.”

In that way, the blue hair isn’t just for fun: It’s a symbol of Kresch’s refusal to take himself too seriously – while taking life itself very seriously indeed.