Tagged Tel Aviv

Tucson’s Next Gen men gain insight on Israel exploration trip

The recent Next Gen Men’s Group trip to Israel was no run of the mill tour. Participants returned believing that Israel-Palestine issues are far more complicated than they thought before the journey, says participant Larry Gellman. What defined the trip for Gellman and others was the unique opportunity to… Read more »

Groundbreaking TV comedy introduces Israelis to their Ethiopian neighbors

The cast of “Nebsu,” the first Israeli prime-time show to feature a black actor in a lead role. (Reset)

TEL AVIV (JTA) – Last week, Israelis for the first time saw a black lead character on a homegrown, primetime television show. “Nebsu,” a half-hour comedy, focuses on an Ethiopian man who is married to an Ashkenazi Jewish woman. Misunderstanding ensues. “There is definitely a lot of cultural confusion in the… Read more »

Team Israel baseball gear a home run with kvelling American Jewish fans

Cody Decker of Team Israel holds team mascot the Mensch on a Bench after the World Baseball Classic game against the Netherlands in Seoul, South Korea, March 9, 2017. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — A couple weeks ago, Adam Atkins didn’t know Israel had a baseball team. But since the squad started winning games last week in the World Baseball Classic, he has become a fan. Atkins and his friends wanted team caps, but were frustrated to discover they were… Read more »

I celebrate Hanukkah — but here’s why I love Christmas

(JTA) — All I want for Hanukkah is Christmas. I grew up in suburban Chicago surrounded by my fellow Jews — at school, at camp, on the weekends, at my parents’ friends’ houses, in the streets and parks of my neighborhood. Even then, I knew that Jews made up less… Read more »

Were claims of Israel’s ‘arson intifada’ overblown?

An Israeli firefighting airplane tries to extinguish a blaze raging in Haifa, Nov. 24, 2016. (Meir Vaknin/Flash90)

TEL AVIV (JTA) – As wildfires threatened Israel last week, rhetoric linking arson to terrorism heated up. For about a week, fires across the country burned huge swaths of land, destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses, and forced tens of thousands of people to flee. Dozens were injured, though few… Read more »

Why Tel Aviv is so crazy about dogs

Mira Marcus, the city of Tel Aviv's director of international press, with her dog Shani at the Kelaviv dog festival in Tel Aviv, Aug. 26, 2016. (Andrew Tobin)

It’s not every day you see a dog getting a massage. But in this Israeli city, somehow it seems expected. At Tel Aviv’s first official dog festival, hundreds of dogs took over Yehoshua Park and its dog park on Friday afternoon. As canine customers wandered among vendors selling dog-related products… Read more »

Have WiFi? You can explore the story of the Jewish people anywhere you go

This photograph of an Arab neighbor visiting a friend in Kibbutz Kfar Giladi in 1945 or 1946 is part of the Museum of the Jewish People's vast archives. (Herbert Sonnenfeld/Courtesy of Beit Hatfutsot)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — When Benny Daon entered the Israeli high-tech scene in 1993, the Jewish state was just beginning to earn its reputation as a global hub of cutting-edge technology. He worked his way up the ladder, first at other people’s companies and then as CEO of his… Read more »

Israel touts gay-friendly climate, but rights fight faces religious firewall

Israelis participating in the annual gay pride parade in Jerusalem, Sept. 18, 2014. (Hadas Parush/Flash 90)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — As last Tuesday ended, it felt like Israel’s gay community had taken a major step forward. On Feb. 23, eight separate Israeli parliamentary committees convened to discuss a broad set of issues facing the country’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Lawmakers from a range of parties… Read more »

Gentrification — via gardening — slowly comes to derelict South Tel Aviv

The Onya Collective is behind the new garden in South Tel Aviv. (Gabi Berger)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — The teeming blocks around this city’s New Central Bus Station are anything but scenic. Packed with humanity at every hour of the day, they are dizzying monuments to urban blight: equal parts graffiti, chaotic traffic and bustling, black-market commerce. So on a sunny Friday last… Read more »

Rockets pop Tel Aviv’s bubble but not its residents’ routines

Michael Savlov, left, an attendant at a Tel Aviv gas station, went back to work not long after a shrapnel from a Gaza rocket landed at the site on July 10, 2014. (Ben Sales / JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Had the shrapnel fallen a foot to the right, gas station attendant Michael Savlov would have been destroyed along with the rest of the Dor Alon gas station in southern Tel Aviv. Savlov was with a customer in the station’s office Thursday morning when a… Read more »

Women of the Wall take on tefillin in Tel Aviv/Reporter’s Notebook

A woman lays tefillin at the entrance to Tel Aviv's Carmel Market. Women of the Wall offered women in Tel Aviv the chance to put on a tallit or tefillin on Friday. (Ben Sales/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — They were standing in a public square in a major Israeli city, laying tefillin on women amid shouts of protest and quizzical looks from nearby men in black hats. It has become an occasional morning routine for Women of the Wall. Except this time, they… Read more »

American labor unions raising millions for Rabin Center

The Yitzhak Rabin Center in Tel Aviv, a museum dedicated to the memory and lifework of the slain Israeli prime minister. (Courtesy 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 at 65: Tel Aviv bike scene exploding

Bicycle rental vending machine and bikes in Tel Aviv. (Sheila Wilensky/AJP)

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 »

For Israeli souk’s old-timers, healthy Mediterranean diet is no secret

Shoppers checking out the dried fruit stand at the Tel Aviv Carmel Market, 2009. (Liron Almog/Flash90/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Puffing on a cigarette, Amnon Tubi says he always knew what scientists only recently have proven about staying healthy. “I knew that Mediterranean food is the best,” he said, surrounded by tables overflowing with tomatoes, cucumbers and oranges. “The legumes are healthy. There’s a lot… Read more »

Seeking Kin: What became of three Grodno students?

The fate of three of the 15 students in the first graduating class of Grodno's Tarbut Gymnasium in 1930 (pictured with three of their teachers and the principal) remains a mystery. The three students, shown in the inserts, are Velvel Poliak, Yitzhak Levin/Levine and Max Margolis. (Courtesy Ruth Marcus)

The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. BALTIMORE (JTA) — In 2008, Ruth Marcus began looking ahead to 2010: the centennial of the birth of her late father, Yitzhak Eliasberg, and 80 years since Grodno’s Tarbut Gymnasium graduated its first class, Eliasberg included. Marcus,… Read more »