Israel Active

At a moving bar mitzvah ceremony at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, dozens of young Indian Jews celebrated their Bnei Mitzvot.  The group was on a trip with Birthright, an organization that brings Jewish youth to Israel to experience their ancestral homeland.

Children from both Arab and Jewish kindergartens and a youth music ensemble of Arabs and Jews joined in the festivities at the dedication of the new Lod Mosaic Center. It houses a magnificent 1,700-year-old Roman-era mosaic that was discovered in Lod in 1996 and has just returned from a world tour.

Holocaust survivors Shimon and Susanna Lifshitz donated an ambulance to Magen David Adom after making Aliyah. Their grandson Avraham, a senior EMT for MDA, recently delivered a baby girl in the same ambulance. Grandfather Shimon said, “it’s for moments like this that we donated the ambulance”.

Despite attacks from nearby Gaza, the 30,000 residents of the Israeli city of Sderot are not abandoning their homes. See these photos of parks, lakes, yeshiva, animal therapy center, Founder’s Museum, music center, hi-tech businesses, as well as some brightly decorated bomb shelters.

Israel’s Barkai Center for Practical Rabbinics gave its 2022 Rabbi of the Year award to Rabbi Yonah Meshulam HaCohen Fodor of the Beit Yehuda Synagogue in Beit Vagan, Jerusalem. Two Gabayim tied for Gabay of the Year, and Lod’s Ramat Eshkol community won Community of the year.

The new group “Jewish Studies Zionist Network” comprises scholars and educators in the field of Jewish Studies who “affirm that Zionism is a legitimate movement for the national self-determination of the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland.”  I hope they use my newsletter material.

Jun 5th's webinar in JNF’s series on Zionism features Fleur Hassan Nahoum - Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem. She speaks about being a woman in power, the Bedouin, Jewish, Arab, and Druze women she works with, and the strong Emirati women in the UAE-Israel Business Council she founded.  (webinar registration link) (previous webinars in the series)

Hundreds of young Christian adults are scheduled to arrive in Israel this summer for the largest Passages tour since the start of the pandemic. College and graduate students from across the US come to Israel to connect with their biblical roots and get to know the modern Jewish state.

A Ramat Gan company found an unusual way to reduce its carbon footprint. It dropped a bag of diamonds into the recycling bin. Employees contacted the Hiriya Recycling Park who located the refuge truck. A scan revealed the diamonds, which were returned to their grateful owners.

Excellent video explaining how the name “West Bank” originated.