Israel Active

20,000 Jews celebrated together in Teddy Stadium Jerusalem (Israel’s capital city). Another 11,000 gathered in Tel Aviv. The occasion was the completion of the seven-year Daf Yomi cycle where hundreds of thousands study a page of Talmud every day.

A guest blog from Samantha Friedman describing the 3-week visit by 120 Diller Teen Fellows from North America who have come to Israel in order to learn how to lead the next generation and inspire them to help repair the world.

This summer, 350 young Americans have decided to make Aliya with Nefesh b’Nefesh in order to join the ranks of the Israel Defence Forces immediately. Most of the expected arrivals are setting their sights on elite or combat units.

Technion Professor Dan Shechtman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of quasicrystals. But not a lot of people know that he is also a talented jewellery craftsman. He recently exhibited 15 unique pieces that he made for his wife Zippy.

The Technion’s new supercomputer is the most powerful computing cluster ever deployed for civilian use in Israel. The “Tamnun” (Hebrew for octopus) is an SGI Infiniband Cluster, consisting of 1260 processor cores, with 96 GB of RAM memory per node. Nerds like me just sigh.

Thanks to Donald Harrison, editor of San Diego Jewish World, who has published a feature about the editor of the newsletter you are now reading. Please click on the following to read it.

The Nefesh b’Nefesh “singles project” is bringing another 60 Jewish American unmarried men and women to Israel this year. They hope to join the 640 previous unattached immigrants who came with NbN and who have since found partners and married in Israel – most to native Israelis.

The average Israeli eats 10 litres of ice cream per year – 50% more than the average Italian. How come? Because ice cream makes you happy!

Israel’s Olympic team gives the BBC a geography lesson. And even the Mayor of Tel Aviv informs the UK Press Council that Jerusalem was Israel’s capital over 3000 years ago and it still is!

One of the largest gold treasures ever to be discovered in Israel was uncovered at near Herzliya. Over 100 gold pieces weighing around 400 grams were found at Appollonia National Park. They were buried during the 13th Century Crusader battles between Saladin and King Richard of England.