Israel Active

Hiking is very popular in tiny Israel and you have the potential to find things almost everywhere at its 37,000 registered archeological sites. Israel Antiques Authority chairman Yisrael Hasson has used educational programs to engage schools in archeological activities.

In February, the Israeli government nearly doubled the rental assistance benefit given to immigrants aged under 49, in the 2nd to 5th years after Aliyah.

After a hotplate caused a deadly Brooklyn house fire in 2015, an Israeli designer, Rafi Gabbay, developed a safer version.  HotMat, is a new foldable 4-ring hotplate, to give observant Jews a safe, portable and rabbinically sanctioned method of heating up food on the Sabbath.  Shipping for Passover.

As forecast, the eco-bridge over Highway 1 between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is now being constructed.  Wildlife will soon be able to cross the highway in safety.

Shadi Khalloul writes that Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians and other minorities grow in freedom and safety with full democratic rights. Christians fill all types of high positions including a Supreme Court Judge, Salim Jubran – a Maronite Christian.

The Kadima Fund, a bottom-up online resource center for grass roots pro-Israel initiatives, has just been launched.  It will offer advice, materials, contacts, professional resources, financial assistance, and more, to pro-Israel Activists in local, grassroots initiatives.  Could it help me?

On a small farm 43 miles east of Vancouver, British Columbia, Jenna and Gil Lewinsky, an Israeli husband and wife, are raising around 130 Jacob sheep - mentioned in Genesis. The Lewinskys plan to take the sheep to Israel this year on a specially fitted plane.

Israel’s Ashley Perry - President of Reconectar - describes the vital project that reconnects descendants of forced converts of Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities (Bnei Anusim) with the Jewish people and the Jewish State.

Israel has completed a secret operation to rescue 19 of Yemen's last remaining Jews.  They included head of the Raida community, Rabbi Dahari, who also brought a Torah scroll dating back to the fifteen or sixteenth century.  “I am so excited to reach the land of our forefathers,” he said.

In honor of of Zidan Seif, the brave Israeli-Druze policeman who gave his life stopping the Nov 2014 massacre at Jerusalem’s Har Nof synagogue, Rabbi Yaakov Kermaier has brought Jews and Druze together for Jethro’s Shabbat, when Jews read the Torah portion of the Druze founder.