Israel Active

After hearing his story, 17-year-old Californian teen, Drew Principe, raised $15,000 to enable 89-year-old Shoah survivor Henry Oster to travel to Israel where he would meet his last living relative and finally celebrate his bar mitzvah.

This photo taken at the back of a restaurant in central Jerusalem captures two young men praying – one Muslim about to bow on his prayer mat, the other a Jew with his Tefillin on.  Religious tolerance and freedom of religion being practiced in the holiest city in the world.

Israel’s finance minister Moshe Kachlon added a sweetener to the Jewish New Year for the business community, signing an order this week authorizing a Customs tax exemption for the import of 560 tons of honey to the Land of Milk and Honey.

Tel Aviv University researchers have used multi-spectral imaging to reveal a Hebrew inscription on a pottery shard (ostracon) from 600 BCE.  The object was originally found at Tel Arad and has been on display at the Israel Museum for the last 50 years. The inscription is a request for supplies.

Dr Shadman Zaman was taught at school to hate Israel. But his grandfather taught Shadman the truth about the perseverance of the Jewish people for self-determination in their homeland. Shadham now uses his inherited affinity with Zionism to inspire others.

As part of the UploadEuro project of pro-Israel non-profit StandWithUs, students of the IDC Herzliya brought 7 popular international bloggers (and their 9 million readers) to see Israel as they’d never seen it before. E.g. they were amazed to see Arabs and Jews sit together in a Jaffa restaurant.  They also visited Jerusalem and the Dead Sea.

93-year-old Shalom Shtamberg celebrated his bar mitzvah 80 years late.  When he was 13 he was imprisoned by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto. After reading from the Torah in Haifa he danced with family and friends.

Letter seals excavated in Jerusalem’s City of David National Park dating back to 700 BCE are to be displayed at the annual City of David archaeology conference. Biblical names like "Achiav Ben Menachem" prove refugee Northern Kingdom Jews had senior Jerusalem positions.

120 years ago, on 25th Aug 1897, the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland began a Jewish transformation. The sheheheyanu blessing was read, thanking God for bringing the Jews to this time. “We are coming home,” Herzl declared in the Congress. and famously stated later: “At Basel, I founded the Jewish state.”

3000 years ago, the Israelite King David used Israeli “outside of the box” thinking to penetrate the seemingly impossible defenses of the Jebusite city that would become Jerusalem – the capital of the Jewish State.