Israel Active

This photo, of the new IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi and his wife Sharon at the Western Wall Plaza, has gone viral. The mechitza [partition] that separates women and men cannot separate their smiles and love. A picture is worth a thousand words. It also tells a thousand stories.

A new archeology garden was inaugurated at Kibbutz Kfar Aza. It replaces an orchard that Gaza terrorists burned down. A crowdfunding campaign and individual donors raised funds for the new garden to serve as a community gathering spot, displaying artifacts from the State Treasure collections.

La’aretz is a new non-profit organization with the mission to help Israelis and Jews overcome bureaucratic and financial obstacles to immigrating, returning, visiting and traveling to Israel. La’aretz complements Nefesh b’Nefesh by facilitating complex cases and funding those in need.

Israeli genealogy company MyHeritage has posted 1.7 million Israeli immigration records online, using scanned ship and plane passenger lists stored at the Israel State Archives. The records are from 1919 to around 1979. The data is free for everyone to search (see 3rd link below).

Video of the on-going excavations inside caves in the Judean desert where Jewish rebels fighting the Romans hid during the Bar Kochba revolt 2,000 years ago.

Israeli archaeologists have discovered the earliest evidence of silver being used as currency in the Levant, dating back more than 3,600 years. The silver hoard was found in Israel’s Megiddo, Gezer, and Shiloh. (The Torah records Abraham weighing out 400 shekels to buy a burial plot.)

40 US students went on a 10-day tour of Israel and the United Arab Emirates - the inaugural trip of the Israel on Campus Coalition’s (ICC) Geller International Fellowship. The students were from all backgrounds and attended state colleges, historically black colleges, and Ivy League institutions.

US Christian Zionist NGO Passages (see previously) has brought its 10,000th college student to visit the Holy Land. This winter, 450 students participated in Passages’ winter program.

Due to the funeral procession of Rabbi Shimon Baadani (z”l), a bride was unable to get to her wedding. So, the head of United Hatzalah in Bnei Brak sent an ambulance, which had just finished its shift safeguarding the funeral, to pick up the bride and take her to the wedding hall.

Professor Reuven Yeshurun of the University of Haifa is giving a Zoom (and live) lecture on Mon 23 Jan (7:30pm Israel, 5:30pm UK or 12.30pm Eastern). The title is “The first settled society in human history” which he describes happened in the Land of Israel 15,000 years ago. Details & registration here.