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Diaspora
With the birth of the State of Israel, over 850,000 Jews were forced to leave the Arab and Islamic world. In Yemen, however, this was not the first time a mass immigration to Israel had taken place. More than three decades earlier, with the help of a young man named Shmuel Yavnieli, over 1,500 Yemenite Jews started their own journey to the Land of Israel, and embarked on a voyage largely untold…
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Land of Israel
During the conflict known as the Sinai Campaign, the State of Israel conquered the Gaza Strip. Military documents and rare color photographs reveal what this brief period of Israeli control of Gaza looked like – back in 1956
Judaism
Amidst the horrors of war, it is common for children to find some solace through artistic endeavors. But in an astounding discovery, we’ve also now seen that there is a clear connection between the art made by children during the Holocaust and the art created by the children witnessing the current war in Israel and Gaza. Why is this the case, and what can it teach us about the experiences of children witnessing the slaughter of their people, 80 years apart?
In 1948, 3-year-old Yigal Cohen was smuggled out of Kibbutz Nir Am at the outbreak of the War of Independence. He later returned to the kibbutz, grew up, and started a family. 75 years later, on October 7, the kibbutz was attacked again. Residents evacuated, among them 78-year-old Yigal, who was doing this for the second time in his life…
The morning of Simchat Torah 2023 was supposed to be a day of celebration – marking 70 years of Kibbutz Nahal Oz. But with chilling similarity to another event that took place just three years after Nahal Oz was founded, this day ended entirely differently – in unimaginable tragedy. Is this what life is like for those whose homes are the border itself?
Prof. Joseph G. Weiss was one of the 20th century’s leading scholars of Hasidism. Following Weiss’s tragic death in 1969, his mentor Gershom Scholem selected 250 books from his former student’s personal collection to be brought to the National Library in Jerusalem. Yet something happened along the way. To this day it’s not clear what became of many of these books…
Israel has been at war since October 7, 2023. The darkness of these days cannot be overstated, but at the same time the most miraculous of things have been occurring all the while: as life collapsed around us, people rose up and came together in the most amazing ways. Israel is a country like no other – a land full of upstanding people who truly exemplify what kindness really means.
When the bulldozers came to knock down the houses of Netiv Ha’Asarah in the Sinai Peninsula, the residents experienced real trauma. They could have moved to the center of the country, far away from any danger, but their pioneering spirit led them to resettle just a few feet from the Gaza Strip.
Diaspora, Land of Israel
For over seventy years, Be’eri Printers – Kibbutz Be’eri’s famous printing press – has touched the lives of all of us in Israel. On October 7, many dozens of Be’eri’s sons and daughters were murdered. Despite this disaster, the printing press was back in operation less than ten days later. This is the story of a pioneering project that has risen from the ashes, like a phoenix.
When the Yom Kippur War broke out, the women of Kibbutz Beit Alfa mobilized to protect the delicate fabric of community life, something that happened across Israel. They were determined and resourceful, despite the uncertainty and anxiety: “All we thought about was how we’d survive the next day.”
How of a group of refugees stranded off the shores of Vietnam somehow ended up in a small town in southern Israel…
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