The story of how a fighter in the Palmach, a Jewish underground organization from the pre-state era, managed to translate a popular children’s classic while incarcerated in Jerusalem’s central prison…
Hannah Senesh’s Hanukkah
In December of 1933, a 12-year-old Hannah Senesh composed a Hanukkah poem that concluded with the words: “These candles encourage us at every turn, fear not Israel, the time is yet to come.”
The Wise Men of Chelm: The Unfair Shaming of a Jewish Community
How did the Jews of Chelm, a city in Poland, acquire their reputation as a “town of fools”? Could Chelm have actually been a community of great sages? We set out in search of the true story behind this odd piece of Jewish folklore…
Chaim Topol and the Giant Shadow of Sallah Shabati
Sallah Shabati, the character that launched Chaim Topol’s acting career, also threatened to typecast him as a mere impressionist. But thanks to Topol’s great talent and determination, what could have been an obstacle to a rich and varied career became the role of a lifetime. Topol’s wife Galia and son Omer discuss the role that became the actor’s ticket to the international stage and screen…
The First Jewish Book Printed in England
With the return of Jews to England in the 17th century, the developing community’s members surprisingly saw no need for a Jewish printing house. The first printed book was published decades later and only in the wake of a controversial internal dispute…
The Woman Who Conjured Up Cruella de Vil
She went from selling furniture to becoming a successful screenwriter and author, but she wrote her best-loved and best-known work, The Hundred and One Dalmatians, when she was sixty years old. Her own nine Dalmatians were her inspiration, along with a passing remark made by a friend, that sparked an idea for one of the most beloved villains in popular culture…
A Cinderella Story: The First Winner of the International Bible Contest
Overnight, Amos Hakham, winner of the first International Bible Contest, became an Israeli celebrity. From that point on, the Israeli public just couldn’t get enough of him…
“Israel is a graveyard for Jewish languages”: An Interview With Dr. Tamar Eilam Gindin
The culture of Iranian Jews in Israel is bound up with a language that is nearly lost: Judeo-Persian. According to Dr. Tamar Eilam Gindin, a linguist and scholar of Iran, Judeo-Persian is not just one language. It is rather like a tapestry woven over thousands of years of Jewish history in Persia, so that sometimes different dialects were even found in the same city. In this interview, Dr. Eilam Gindin discusses the fate of Judeo-Persian in Israel as well as the secret language of Persian Jewry…
Maya the Bee in the Service of Germany’s Soldiers
The beloved children’s book about the brave little bee who saves her beehive became one of the most popular books among German soldiers during the First World War. What led them to carry this book about the adventures of a small bee with them onto the battlefield? Does it contain hints of the devious ideology that would cause global devastation only a few decades later?
Poems and Stories by the Jewish Children of Kharkiv, Ukraine
A booklet labeled “The Lives of Children”, preserved at the National Library of Israel, contains Hebrew stories and poems written a century ago by Jewish high school students in Ukraine
