Israel Active

Rafi Peretz is Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defence Forces. He was one of Israel’s first religious Air Force pilots. At the lecture he delivered at Yeshiva University, he impressed many as an individual, a model soldier and a world class Torah scholar.

Yad Vashem’s holocaust database has been generating hundreds of emotional reunions of long-lost families. Although brothers Nahum and Yaakov Korenblum died 10 years ago, their descendents discovered each other after previous searching failed due to different spellings of their surname.

While sitting in an ethics seminar during IDF Special Forces training, Nadav Weinberg realized that the information he was learning was not common knowledge. Ever since that moment, Nadav has been determined to share what he has learned with people across the US, especially students.

The soldier said he served in the Iranian military and has Jewish roots. He claimed that his parents had become Muslims out of fear of the regime, but that his grandparents were Jewish and he sees himself as a Jew.

In 1969 Geoffrey Rogg met Israel’s first Prime Minister who asked him “when are you going to live in Eretz Yisrael?” 42 years later Geoffrey arrived at Ben Gurion airport on Aliya.

On the 73rd anniversary of the nazi’s Kristallnacht riots, Israel and Bavaria signed an education exchange agreement to teach the histories of Israel and Bavaria to each other's students.

Adael Sheetrit saw the two incoming Grad rockets that exploded, wounding her parents and killing Yossi Shoshan. Shrapnel hit Adael in the stomach and she had no pulse when she was taken to hospital. Now, after surgery, she sits up in bed and declares 'I was granted a second life.'

An Ashdod synagogue has been holding Sabbath services continually for the last 40 years. However last week the warden was in hospital having a planned operation and couldn’t open the synagogue. Which is why no one was inside when a Kassam rocket from Gaza terrorists slammed into the building last Saturday.

Twenty years ago, Israel airlifted 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to the Jewish State in just 36 hours. Yaroush Vanda was one of nine babies born in flight. She is now an officer in the IDF. At an event at the President’s house, Ethiopian-Israelis honoured included singer Esther Rada, IDF Major Shlomi Betza – who was critically wounded in combat in the Second Lebanon War and has since returned to combat duty, and successful high-tech businessman Asher Elias.