Israel Active

For the first time, the global Jewish learning movement Limmud reached the White City. The two-day event provided the normally secular city of Tel Aviv with 130 sessions, 120 presenters and seven musical performances.

Israel is the ultimate place to celebrate Shavuot. Next year why not stay on a Moshav where you can enjoy folk dancing, horse prancing, kite flying, a cow beauty pageant and the food! Also on Voice of Israel you can learn why Shavuot is a night of revelation.

The Israel Museum in Jerusalem has opened its “pivotal moments in civilization” exhibition, featuring the world’s oldest copy of the Ten Commandments. The 2000-year-old Dead Sea Scroll containing the famous text had never been previously on display in Israel.

Invoking the Torah commandment, not to take the mother bird with its chicks, Tel Aviv airport authorities halted flights for 30 minutes when a nest with five hatched falcons was discovered in a navigational antenna. As the worried adult birds circled overhead, the baby falcons were carefully removed and taken to the nearby Ramat Gan Safari to be raised and then returned to the wild.

Here are some classic songs to celebrate the 48th anniversary of the unification of Israel’s capital city. Plus details of the Jerusalem Day parade.

Hundreds of years after their forefathers fled Spain, some 300 descendants of Spanish conversos live in El Salvador as a thriving community, observing Orthodox Judaism, keeping the laws of the Sabbath, and dreaming of converting and immigrating to Israel as Jews.

Two Dutch filmmakers produced this “educational” video featuring 101 Israelis.

This newsletter editor booked a trip to the UK before the previous Israeli election date was announced and was unable to vote. It is now proposed that Israel will amend the law and allow absentee voting in future elections. We shall see!

The Hallelu Foundation has just been established, with the aim of advancing Israel’s global image. It will show the world what Israel is really all about and make us proud of Israel. Here is Hallelu’s first video.

All Israeli climbers visiting Chabad of Katmandu are given one of the satellite phones donated by the family of Nadav Shoham. Nadav was killed last year while climbing in the Himalayas. His family teamed up with Chabad to prevent such a tragedy from happening again. And it worked.