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…
The Case of Agatha Christie’s Mysterious Disappearance
One rainy December evening, Agatha Christie left her house and never returned. The disappearance of the bestselling mystery writer shocked the British nation, including Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, who took a surprising part in the unprecedented search mission…
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…
The Story of Israel’s First Shelter for Battered Women
“We didn’t think we were making history. All we wanted was to work on behalf of women”: The story of the first shelter for battered women in Israel, established in Haifa in 1977, and the women who founded it
‘Toyve the Black Cantor’ and His 1930 World Tour
When celebrated African-American Yiddish soloist Thomas Larue crossed the Atlantic, he didn’t know what was in store…
His Sugar Cube Vaccine Beat Polio. Then He Took a Shot at Middle East Peace
Albert Sabin may be less famous than Jonas Salk, but he probably shouldn’t be
Manmade Climate Change 150 Years Ago? In Yiddish?!
1871 article: “Hardly anybody knows that war affects the weather strongly and causes heavy rain falls, strong winds, thunder and lightning.”
The Emotional Reunion With Hannah Senesh’s Notebook
In the 1950s, Katherine Senesh donated four pages containing poems handwritten by her paratrooper daughter to the National Library. Now, with the deposit of the full Hannah Senesh Collection, these pages will be reunited with the notebook from which they originally came
The Last Bar Mitzvah Before Kristallnacht
At Berlin’s Rykestrasse Synagogue, Fredi chanted Moses’ song of darkness and redemption
