Ariel Sharon is pictured in Jerusalem with the Temple Mount in the background on July 24, 2000. (Flash90)
Ariel Sharon, one of Israel’s last warrior statesmen, whose military and political careers were woven into his nation’s triumphs and failures, has died. Sharon, 85, died Saturday at the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv after eight years in a coma. “He went when he decided to go,” said his younger… Read more »
Prof. Evyatar Erell with a prototype of the Seasons window. “We spend most of our lives in a controlled environment,” says Evyatar Erell, associate professor of desert architecture and urban planning at Ben-Gurion University’s Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research. “We live and work under conditions that are different from those outside. When it’s hot, we turn on our… Read more »
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Growing up in the Urals, Pavel Polev was a precocious ice skater and a member of the Soviet Union’s national youth figure-skating team. But in 1992, at age 15, Polev’s life was upended when he joined the massive wave of Jews immigrating to Israel from… Read more »
Jewish Agency chief Natan Sharansky called for the release of Jonathan Pollard in his speech to the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in Jerusalem, Nov. 12, 2013. (Yonatan Sidnel/Flash90) TEL AVIV (JTA) — The disclosure last week that American intelligence spied on former Israeli prime ministers has given new momentum to the effort to secure a pardon for convicted spy Jonathan Pollard. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several leading members of Knesset members have called in recent… Read more »
The century’s largest winter storm in Israel is over, but it left an aftermath of icy roads. You can imagine what fearsome traffic jams materialized. So it was on the morning of Dec. 16 on Road 443, which leads from Modiin to Northern Jerusalem, including our Mount Scopus hospital. The road… Read more »
Young people sit a cafe table set up amid the snow on Jerusalem's Jaffa Road on Dec. 15, 2013. (Hadas Parush/Flash 90) Only about 20 minutes outside of the city did it begin to appear — patches of white on the rough hills abutting the road, sprinklings of flakes on the pines. By the time our bus reached Mevasseret Tzion, near Jerusalem, the snow was blanketing the ground, building up in… Read more »
The city of Rahat is the largest Bedouin settlement in Israel. (Yossi Zamir/Flash 90) WADI AL-NAAM, Israel (JTA) – In this unofficial Bedouin town of 14,000 not far from Beersheva in the Negev Desert, families live in clusters of shanties with intermittent electricity provided by generators or solar panels. A communal structure has soft plastic walls and dirt floors, with a small pit… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry holding a joint news conference in Jerusalem, Dec. 5, 2013. (Kobi Gideon/GPO/FLASH90) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Amid simmering tensions over Iran policy, the Obama and Netanyahu governments appear to have quietly forged common ground in recent weeks on Israeli-Palestinian talks, with the United States accepting that a possible “framework” agreement might not address every outstanding issue in the negotiations. Such an agreement,… Read more »
Demonstrators gathered on Nov. 30, 2013 in the southern Israeli town of Hura during a protest against the government's plan to resettle some 30,000 Bedouin residents of the Negev. (David Buimovitch/Flash 90) (JTA) — They can’t agree on the project’s goal. They can’t agree on who supports it. They can’t even agree on its name. But when it comes to the Israeli government’s plan to relocate 30,000 Negev Bedouin, representatives and allies of the Bedouin community agree with the right wing… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — For 90 minutes in a packed hotel conference room in the heart of Washington, Israel was the colonizer, the settler state, the perpetuator of apartheid. As the annual meeting this weekend of the American Studies Association demonstrated, participants who favored boycotting Israeli universities far outnumbered those opposed.… Read more »
Susan and Alan Kendal at milepost marker in the Golan Heights In November, 33 Tucsonans traveled to Israel under the auspices of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona — some for the first time, some for the 35th time, and everything in between. The mission was personalized to accommodate these varying degrees of experience, with optional side trips to Petra… Read more »
Activists at a 20111 rally in Tel Aviv gather under a banner that reads, "We requested refuge, we received prison." (Dima Vazinovich/Flash90) SAHARONIM, Israel (JTA) — A long chain-link fence with barbed wire seems to rise up out of the desert at the new Sadot facility in Israel for African migrants. Situated along Israel’s barren border with Egypt and across the street from the notorious Ketziot Prison, which houses thousands of… Read more »
Rabbi Eliezer Berland, seen at a prayer service at the Western Wall on Jan. 25, 2012, fled to Morocco after being accused of sex abuse. (Uri Lenz/FLASH90) (JTA) — Surrounded by dozens of adoring followers at his grandson’s wedding this summer, Eliezer Berland looked like any other Hasidic rebbe marking a family celebration. But Berland is not like most rabbis. The founder of the Shuvu Bonim religious seminary in Israel, Berland, 76, fled to Morocco earlier… Read more »
Dov Jakobovitz, 85, lives in an old-age home in a poor neighborhood of Tel Aviv. He survived Auschwitz and fought in two Israeli wars, but now he doesn't have enough money for food. (Ben Sales) TEL AVIV (JTA) — Breakfast costs Dov Jakobovitz $2. Lunch costs him $2.25. Both are served in the public old-age home in south Tel Aviv where he lives. But the food is not to his liking. Jakobovitz longs for the dishes he ate as a child in Transylvania —… Read more »
Manager Brad ausmus, right, and two of his coaches, Shawn Green, left, and Gabe Kapler, constituted the all-Jewish, Major Leagie-pedigree leadership of Israel's 2012 tean competing for a World Baseball Classic bid. (Israel Association of Baseball) BALTIMORE (JTA) – Almost from the moment they met him, several officials and players with Israel’s national baseball team said they saw manager Brad Ausmus headed for the major leagues. They cited his communication skills, command of the game and preparation — not to mention his 18-year playing career… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — It is a cause that elicited cheers from a roomful of participants at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly. Leading politicians have long championed it and are now trying to push it through a divided Knesset. Nearly two-thirds of Israelis support it, and activists… Read more »
President Obama makes a statement announcing an interim agreement on Iran's nuclear program at the White House on Nov. 23, 2013. (T.J. Kirkpatrick-Pool/Getty Images) TEL AVIV (JTA) — For the first time in a decade, the United States and a coalition of world powers have reached an agreement with Iran to curb the country’s nuclear program. The deal requires Iran to limit its nuclear enrichment and freeze most of its centrifuges for six… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a statement, in his office in Jerusalem, Nov. 24, 2013 regarding the agreement reached in Geneva a few hours earlier between Iran and six world powers. (Haim Zach/GPO/Flash90) TEL AVIV (JTA) — With an interim agreement on Iran’s nuclear program in place, President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu each face formidable challenges ahead. For Obama, the goal will be to move from the interim agreement to a broader and more permanent deal within six… Read more »
Naftali Bennett says his wife, Gilat, right, only drew closer to Judaism when the couple lived in New York. (Ilia Yefimovich/Getty Images) NEW YORK (JTA) — Naftali Bennett doesn’t like to waste time. In the eight months since he took over three Israeli ministries — religious services, economy, and Diaspora and Jerusalem affairs — Bennett has pushed through legislation to give Israeli couples more freedom in choosing which rabbi officiates at… Read more »
Israeli military personnel assist survivors of the typhoon that ravaged the Philippines last week. (JTA) — Obviously wanting to get back to work as the medical manager of the field hospital set up by the Israel Defense Forces in the Philippines, Lt.-Col. Dr. Ofer Merin speaks hurriedly about the three days his team has been seeing patients in the typhoon-ravaged nation. He tells… Read more »
