Protestant Lord George Gordon, AKA Reb Yisrael Ben Avraham Avinu

Eccentric politician Lord George Gordon spent most of his peculiar life rallying against Catholics and exasperating the King of England, until he decided, after his first stint in prison, to convert to Judaism. Thus, protestant Lord George Gordon would come to be known as the holy Reb Yisrael Ben Avraham Avinu.

A True Jerusalem Story: The Failed Raid of the Lost Ark

More than a century ago, a group of English treasure-hunters showed up in Jerusalem with the most ambitious of goals: They were determined to find the treasures of the ancient biblical kings, no less. This grand quest and its strange results made sensational headlines in newspapers around the globe, not to mention the riots that erupted across the city…

Who Are You Calling a “Shluh”?!

In modern-day Israel, the word “shluh” is sometimes used as an offensive term to describe a person of disheveled or messy appearance. The word in fact hails from Morocco, where it referred negatively to a certain ethnic group, and was used disparagingly by city dwellers to describe uncultured village folk…