Israel Active

Israel’s up-and-coming music sensation, Noa Kirel, has just begun a two-year term in the IDF. She said, “I want to serve as an example for boys and girls to enlist.” A Rabbi told her parents to change her name from Noya to Noa as a baby, due to illness. He said it would enable her to move (“lanua”).

89-year-old Lila not only survived the Holocaust, she made it to Israel, where she raised a family and is now the proud grandmother of an Israeli Air Force pilot. In this touching video she watches as her grandson flies over her Israeli home.

Since its 2016 launch, Israel’s Elementor website builder for WordPress has had over 3 million installs in 180 countries. Orthodox Jewish co-founder Yoni Luksenberg has now returned the 20,000-shekel grant he received from incubator KamaTech so it can benefit new startups.

The National Library of Israel has begun publishing oral histories from the Sephardi Voices initiative, the first digital collection that documents and preserves the life stories of Jews who lived in Arab and Islamic countries. It includes video and audio clips of interviews, plus archive photographs.

Israeli charity Boomerang supports 500 of the 3,000 lone soldiers discharged from the IDF each year with job searching, training, health issues, equipment etc. It recently launched its “Misheli” project to support 1,000 more ex-soldiers and to set up a Call Center helpline service.

46+ heads of state and their entourages attended the fifth World Holocaust Forum, “Remembering the Holocaust, Fighting Antisemitism,” at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. It commemorates the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp at the end of World War II.

Mordechai, a volunteer MDA first responder, was traveling to his own wedding with his ambulance driver friend, when they noticed two vehicles had crashed. Despite being in wedding suits, they immediately administered first aid until an ambulance arrived to take the injured to hospital.

A 13-year-old Israeli boy went out with his family ​​in Caesarea after recent downpours. He saw a stone slab uncovered by heavy rainfall and (from his school archaeology studies) recognized Greek letters. Israel’s Antiquity Authority identified it as a Byzantine burial inscription for the grave of “Anastasius”.

Over 80% of Israel’s $20 billion food industry is kosher. Most of Israel’s 1,800 food processing facilities produce kosher food. Multi-nationals like Nestlé, Unilever, Danone and Pepsi Co. partner with Israeli food companies such as Osem and Strauss. Most exports go to the EU.

Israeli cities have been celebrating the world-wide completion of Daf Yomi (a page a day) study of the Talmud. The program takes 7.5 years. Thousands attended the Siyum HaShas (end of Talmud) ceremony at Jerusalem’s International Conference Center.