Struggling to be heard over a flock of bleating sheep, Israel’s ambassador to Senegal invites a crowd of impoverished Muslims to help themselves to about 100 sacrificial animals that the embassy corralled at a dusty community center here. The October distribution, held as French troops battled Islamists in neighboring… Read more »
Israel
Israeli Paralympian Pascale Bercovitch eyes 2016 Games in Rio
TEL AVIV (JTA) – Pascale Bercovitch has a firm handshake and a ready smile. She’s hard to keep up with as she takes an elevator to a cafe on the ground floor of her gym in northern Tel Aviv and talks about her hopes to compete in 2016 in… Read more »
Haredi Orthodox youth mob Western Wall to protest women’s prayer service
JERUSALEM (JTA) – Haredi Orthodox youths mobbed the Western Wall plaza by the thousands to protest Women of the Wall as they held their monthly prayer service. The youths, many of them students from haredi Orthodox yeshivas, filled the Western Wall Plaza by 6:40 a.m. on Friday, 20 minutes… Read more »
Syria attacks suggest Israel can act with impunity
TEL AVIV (JTA) – Twice in three days, Israeli warplanes entered Syrian airspace and fired on suspected weapons caches bound for Hezbollah — and nothing has happened in response. Some experts are predicting that will continue to be the case following airstrikes near Damascus on Friday and Sunday that are… Read more »
Sharansky’s Kotel plan losing support from both sides
Following a court ruling in their favor, leaders of an organization pushing for women’s prayer rights at the Western Wall have withdrawn their endorsement of Natan Sharansky’s compromise proposal to expand the egalitarian section there. A Jerusalem District Court ruled last week that Women of the Wall members who… Read more »
Can a moderate chief rabbi transform the Israeli Rabbinate? Not really
TEL AVIV (JTA) — To get married in Israel, Dima Motel had to bring his family photo album and two of his ancestors’ birth certificates to a rabbinical court. Then an investigator quizzed his mother in Yiddish. Israel’s Chief Rabbinate often asks Russian immigrants like Motel to prove that… Read more »
American labor unions raising millions for Rabin Center
TEL AVIV (JTA) — The museum dedicated to the memory of Yitzhak Rabin raises nearly half its money from labor leaders. It’s just not the labor you think. Members of U.S. labor unions raised $1.4 million for the Yitzhak Rabin Center in Tel Aviv last year, 45 percent of… Read more »
Israel fest to spotlight innovations, hoopsters, Maccabeats
From the creation of the world’s first hybrid cucumber in the 1950s to the building of particle collectors for Switzerland’s Large Hadron Collider, which led to the 2012 discovery of the Higgs Bosun or “God Particle”(a subatomic particle that accounts for the existence of matter and diversity in the… Read more »
Stroll along Tel Aviv promenade yields intriguing images
In January, separated from my American Jewish Press Association group while touring Old Jaffa, I had little choice but to walk five miles back to our Tel Aviv hotel. For me, it was a happy opportunity to stroll along the Tel Aviv promenade by the Mediterranean Sea. I passed… Read more »
Kotel compromise aside, Israel faces uphill battle over religious pluralism
Natan Sharansky’s proposal last week to expand the space for non-Orthodox prayer at the Western Wall could be historic (see related story, page 10). But for most Israelis, changes at the Western Wall are of only trivial interest. Far more pressing are state restrictions on marriage and conversion, Sabbath… Read more »
The Birthright Israel flip side: Fewer high school students traveling to Israel
NEW YORK (JTA) — With the summer travel season fast approaching, providers of Israel programs for teenagers are bracing themselves for what several say could be a season of historically low travel in a year unaffected by major security concerns. Over the past decade, Israel travel among those aged… Read more »
In U.S. fight over visa waiver exemption for Israel, both sides cite discrimination
WASHINGTON (JTA) – A legislative effort led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to enable Israelis to enter the United States without visas may be stymied by the government – Israel’s government. The hitch is Israel’s inability or unwillingness to fully reciprocate, something required for visa-free travel to… Read more »
Construction of new Kotel site may begin within one month, Sharansky says
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Natan Sharansky said the implementation of his plan to expand the non-Orthodox prayer site at the Western Wall could begin in as little as one month. In an interview Thursday with JTA, Sharansky sounded cautiously optimistic about his proposal to create an egalitarian space equal in… Read more »
Israel at 65: From Rummikub to the ‘God Particle’: A timeline of Israeli innovations
NEW YORK (JTA) — While a great deal of international and media focus has been placed on Israel’s military conflicts, the country quietly has become an energetic, ambitious incubator of entrepreneurialism and invention. What follows is a timeline chronicling some of the most important and interesting innovations produced by Israelis during… Read more »
Israel at 65: Remembering the price of Israel’s freedom
During the recent Passover holiday, we celebrated the ending of our slavery and becoming a free people. After fleeing Egypt, we were liberated but not yet free. Even after receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai, we were not yet free. It took more than 40 years, a full generation,… Read more »
Israel at 65: Tel Aviv bike scene exploding
A short ride on a luxury wooden bicycle can take much longer than expected in south Tel Aviv. The roads are fine, Maxime van Gelder says, “but people keep asking you to stop and take their picture with the bike.” Van Gelder, the 22-year-old marketing director for the 2-year-old… Read more »
Israel at 65: Yad Sarah provides lifeline to elderly, disabled
AJP Associate Editor Sheila Wilensky was in Israel in January with the American Jewish Press Association. From inhalers and humidifiers to walkers and wheelchairs, Israel’s Yad Sarah provides homecare services to thousands of people — all for free. Founded in 1976 in one room, Yad Sarah now has 100… Read more »
Or Chadash students make an Israel connection
Congregation Or Chadash religious school students in grades 1-6 partnered with Connections Israel, a nonprofit organization based in Jerusalem, to send mishloach manot (Purim baskets) to soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces. Along with donating money for the holiday treats, the students wrote letters that were added to the… Read more »
ISRAEL AT 65: Despite challenges, after many visits, Israel still inspires
At my age (closing in on 60), I often tell myself, in a reassuring tone, that “age is just a state of mind.” Now that the State of Israel is turning a ripe old 65, I wonder, what is Israel’s state of mind? And how do we, American Jews,… Read more »
African-Israeli personalities hoping to change community’s image
TEL AVIV (JTA) — When Yityish Aynaw immigrated from Ethiopia to Israel at age 12, she was thrust into an Israeli classroom. An orphan lacking Hebrew skills, Aynaw says she relied on other kids and her own sheer ambition to get through. Ten years later Aynaw, 22, is the… Read more »