Mount Meron: A personal account
Mount Meron: A personal account
Isn’t it obvious that each of us needs to honor others no matter who they are, and that this is the only constant?
(May 5, 2021 / JNS) As ecstatic songs rang through the hills, I tried to enter the stadium around the grave of the Mishnaic sage and spiritual luminary, Shimon bar Yochai. It was packed rock solid with people. “That’s OK, let’s listen outside,” I sighed to my staff.
Earlier, as our bus of Young Judea students climbed towards Mount Meron, I was constantly receiving Shabbat meal request messages. For 39 years, this has been my life; I quickly arranged as many connections as I could, while yearning to return to the festive atmosphere in the bus. Who knew that many of those meals would be cancelled including one requested from Yeshivat Shaalvim?
Get email notification for articles from Allison Kaplan Sommer
Follow
Apr. 21, 2021 3:35 PM
An intensive lobbying campaign is underway in the United States to convince board members of the Jewish National Fund in Israel to block the authorization of land purchases in the West Bank.
A vote by the organization’s Israel-based board of directors, scheduled for Thursday, April 22, will determine if the organization will make a historic pivot by beginning to purchase West Bank land for the purpose of expanding and developing existing Israeli settlements.
JNF, an organization founded in 1901 to acquire and develop land in pre-state Israel for use by Jews, is known in Hebrew as Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael. KKL-JNF operates separately from JNF-USA, its American counterpart, which has broken away from the historic Israeli group over the past quarter century.
Marty Rochesterâs March 24 opinion piece, âOy vey: The excesses of identity politics,â cries out for rebuttal on a number of fronts. Since Iâm having trouble deciding whether I am, in Rochesterâs words, a âgarden-variety liberalâ or a âleft-wing extremist,â Iâll let other more astute readers…
The ORT Montreal Ted Wise Benefit Gala for Jewish Education will take place on Sunday, April 18 virtually. It will feature Terry Fator, a singer, comedian, ventriloquist, and celebrity impressionist who become a superstar after winning Americaâs Got Talent in 2007.
Fator has been the headliner at the Mirage Hotel the past 10 years and has won a multitude of coveted awards such as Las Vegasâs best show, best impressionist, best all-around performer, best family show and best overall show; and year after year he has been ranked in the top three on Forbesâ list of the top-earning comics, just behind comic legend Jerry Seinfeld. As COVID-19 pandemic restrictions start to lift, Fator is moving his show to to the New York New York Casino on the strip.
Follow
Mar. 1, 2021
Hadassah Women s Zionist Organization is coming under fire close to home for its pivotal role in a Thursday decision by the Jewish National Fund in Israel to allocate money to purchase land in the West Bank for Israeli settlements.
After the decision of Hadassah s JNF Representative Barbara Goldstein to abstain from voting have ultimately permitted the allocation of 38 million shekels ($11.6 million) for future purchases of land in the West Bank, to pass, more than 250 graduates of Young Judaea, the youth movement that has been supported by and associated with Hadassah, signed a petition expressing “pain” at the move and “imploring” it to reconsider its position.