Middle East

Sampling Israel’s Ethnic Groups and Restaurants

Author Ethan Michaeli is an American journalist with a knack for schmoozing with people wherever he goes.  While he lives in Chicago, his older brother and parents live in Israel. He travels frequently to Israel to see his Hungarian-born parents and his brother, and whenever he does so, he likes to go touring around the country, meeting people from as many different backgrounds as possible. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Middle East, Travel and Food

Gaming Site, ‘Torah Live,’ Enlivens Jewish Education

Torah Live’s graphics, animation and film level are highly professional and their team of men and women includes over thirty scriptwriters, animators, video editors, and sound and special effects artists. While the world was in lockdown, Torah Live kicked in big time. Since Covid over a million and a half videos have been viewed, and the website has been accessed by 168,000 active users. It has hundreds of thousands of viewers from around North America and the world, including in Moscow, Paris, London, Australia, and South Africa, and including 117 in San Diego, a number the Torah Live people hope will continue to grow. {Toby Klein Greenwald]

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International, Jewish Religion, Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Theatre, Film & Broadcast, Toby Klein Greenwald, USA

The Anti-Israel Con at UConn

Not only was Israel’s self-defense denounced as disproportionate, illegal, overly aggressive, and tantamount to war crimes, but the broader question about Israel’s legal right to even exist was raised, along with the tired, loaded language of the woke Left, language which includes such terms, when describing Israel, as “colonial,” “occupation,” “siege,” “ethnic cleansing,” “settlements,” “state violence,” “racism,” as well as the favorite slur leveled against the Jewish state that it is enforcing a new form of “apartheid” and that a country called “Palestine” will be “liberated” as a result of global advocacy for the Palestinian cause. [Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D]

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Middle East, Richard L. Cravatts, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

Celebrating Diversity in Zichron Yaakov

Located twenty miles south of Haifa, Zichron Yaakov is a charming city of 25,000 people situated on the southern end of the Carmel Mountain range. One of the oldest cities in modern Israel, it was established at the end of 1882 by one hundred pioneers from Romania, members of the Hovevei Tzion – or Lovers of Zion – movement. Hovevei Tzion was one of several organizations that gained traction in Europe in response to the waves of pogroms and openly antisemitic laws that had the cumulative effect of causing approximately 2,000,000 Jews to relocate, a minority of whom made their way to Israel. [Gedaliah Borvick]

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Gedaliah Borvick, Jewish History, Middle East

Shoshana Bryen: U.S. Encourages Palestinian Intransigence

In a meeting in May with then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Joe Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined the Biden administration priority “to continue to rebuild our relationship with the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority.” Now, after announcing it wants to open a U.S. consulate in Jerusalem for the Palestinians, come reports that the administration is working on a plan for a Palestinian “unity government” of Hamas and Fatah to negotiate the “two-state solution” with Israel. [Shoshana Bryen]

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Middle East, Shoshana Bryen, USA

StandWithUs Seeks Formal Investigation of Antisemitism at UC Santa Cruz

StandWithUs called for a formal investigation by the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) leadership into a case where the Muslim Students Association (MSA) likely denied a Jewish student their constitutional rights during a Zoom public meeting, as outlined in a legal letter to the administration sent by StandWithUs and the Jewish student. For the student’s safety, their identity is being kept anonymous. An independent source provided StandWithUs with a captured video of the MSA’s egregious effort to marginalize and stigmatize this Jewish student through discriminatory action. [StandWithUs]

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Middle East, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

Lizerbram: Israeli Technology Can Help the World Solve Climate Change

People often ask me how Israel copes with climate change. Yet Israelis don’t look to cope; they look to solve. When Israelis wanted faster computers, they invented the Intel microchip. When they were tired of missing phone messages, they invented voicemail. And when they were fed up with peak-hour traffic, they invented Waze. As the world faces the behemothic challenge of climate change, tiny Israel—a country the size of New Jersey—could serve as a light unto the nations to solve this macro-environmental crisis. [JNS.org]

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Middle East, The World We Share, USA

Israeli Shekel Increasing in Value Against Other Currencies

The shekel is strong. The dollar is weak. What does that mean? Commentary here puts the blame on high investments from overseas in Israel, especially in high-tech. It also means that Israeli purchases in the US, or in dollar-linked countries–including Israeli travel overseas, are cheap. But Israel exports to the same places aren’t as profitable as usual. There are fewer dollars coming into the country in exchange for what’s exported.  [Ira Sharkansky, Ph.D]

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Business & Finance, International, Ira Sharkansky, Middle East, USA

No Time to Dress: Lifesaving Rescue Made in Pajamas

Just after 8:00 a.m. on Sunday morning, a 92-year-old woman was riding in a car with her daughter and granddaughter near the train station in Modi’in when she suddenly lost consciousness. Her conscientious daughter and granddaughter pulled the car over and called emergency services for help while attempting to perform CPR on the elderly matriarch in the car.  United Hatzalah volunteer EMT Noemie Dray was at her home in Modi’in when the emergency took place. Noemie was asleep after a late-night shift in the Pediatric Ward of Sheba Hospital where she works when she isn’t attending classes. Noemie heard the alert from her emergency communications device, got up, and ran out of the house, without even having time to change clothes.  [United Hatzalah]

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Middle East, Science, Medicine, & Education