Israel Active

The Western Wall Heritage Foundation is launching a new virtual reality (VR) experience in the Western Wall complex.  It provides a virtual tour of the Second Temple, giving visitors an insight into the workings of the center of Jewish life 2,000 years ago.

The world’s oldest man, Holocaust survivor Yisrael Kristal, now lives in Haifa. Due to World War 1, he was unable to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah in Poland, so a few years late...100 years late… he was called up to read the Torah for his delayed Bar Mitzvah – on his 113th birthday.

The 233 North American Olim that landed in Israel on 17th August included the 50,000th immigrant to make Aliya through Nefesh b’Nefesh.  They were greeted in a special ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport by Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin.

The inscription on a 2000-year-old stone weight, discovered in 2013 excavations of Jerusalem’s Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue, has just been translated. It contains the family name Katros (in both Aramaic and ancient Persian) of a Second Temple High Priest, mentioned in the Mishna.

When Michael Levin, a lone soldier who made Aliyah from the USA, was killed in the Second Lebanon War, it set in motion a community-wide, grass roots effort to establish the Lone Soldier Center. On Michael’s 10th yartzheit (anniversary of death) the Jerusalem center opened.

Muslims and Arabs who openly identify as Zionists are growing in number. Read here about Muhammad Zoabi, Mahdi Satri, Ahmed Meligy, Nonie Darwish, Qanta Ahmed, Mosab Hassan Yousef, Mohammad Hosseini, Gabriel Nadaf, Monaliza Abdo and Lucy Aharish.

The full entire support system of Ezer Mizion’s Cancer Support Division was mobilized when both mother and father of a newborn baby were diagnosed with tumors. Ezer Mizion provides services to over 660,000 Israelis, plus its Bone Marrow Registry saves lives of Jewish cancer patients the world over.

Just before the last Jewish New Year, Simon Glassberg flew from Canada to Israel to meet his sister Hilda Shlick (nee Glassberg) whom he thought had died in the Holocaust.  In 1999 another Canadian brother, Karol, entered Hilda’s details into the Yad Vashem database, to be discovered only in 2015 by Hilda’s Israeli grandson David Shlick.

The Temple Mount Sifting Project has identified some 600 lavish stone floor tile fragments believed to have decorated the Second Temple in Jerusalem. They were found in rubble dumped by the Arab Waqf following illegal building on the Temple Mount in 2004.

1900-year-old frescos (wall paintings) have been unearthed at Zippori, the Jewish capital of the Galilee that was home to many Jewish inhabitants throughout the Roman period.  The frescos are the first, only and earliest evidence of figurative images in wall paintings at the site.