You Shall Be a Blessing

“I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing” (Gen. 12:2). Join us as we consider several ways in which we can see that the Lord’s promise to Abraham and his descendants is being partially fulfilled in our world today. Help in

Restore—Shuv

{image_1}“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good” (Gen. 1:1, 31). In love, God created a perfect world. He created man in His own image (Gen. 1:27), and in the beginning there was perfect communion, a whole relationship between God and His creation. Then sin and darkness entered the world. After the story of the Fall in Genesis 3, mankind was in desperate need of returning or being restored to the perfection Adam and Eve had enjoyed at the beginning.

Israel’s “Rain Man” Conserves School Water

{image_1}It was a nightmare. Half of the school’s outlying wall was ripped off in a storm as rainwater runoff caused more than $150,000 in damage. But science teacher Amir Yechieli, saw the disaster as a chance to save the day. Yechieli had studied storm water runoff in the Sinai Desert for a master’s degree.

“Lazy Eye” Glasses Help Kids Overcome Amblyopia

{image_1}An Israeli doctor’s revolutionary invention for treating a childhood eye condition won a prize for industry innovation at the fourth annual International 3D Society Awards. The award will undoubtedly raise worldwide interest in Amblyz Glasses, based on a patent owned by Dr. Omry Ben-Ezra, a family physician who was determined to find a more kid-friendly treatment for amblyopia—commonly known as “lazy eye,” a neural disorder affecting three to five percent of all children.

“WalkMe” through This Website

{image_1}Anyone who’s gotten confused while trying to buy a product or do a financial transaction online—and that includes most of us—will be relieved to know that Israeli startup WalkMe is already marketing its user-friendly “Walk-Thru” instruction system.

Finding the Devil in the Details

Understanding Iran’s Nuclear Program

{image_1}“Constraining Iranian uranium enrichment”—try saying that three times, fast. If saying it is hard, imagine how tough it is to actually constrain it. And what does it even mean? If you don’t know LEU (low-enriched uranium) from WGU (weapons-grade uranium) and can’t distinguish fissile material from missile fuel, then here’s a crash course on Iran’s path to nuclear weapons. If you’re a well-informed expert who knows Arak from Fordo, then here’s a “one stop shop” to summarize Iran’s nuclear program. Most importantly, we’re here to help answer the most crucial question: When and how can Iran get the bomb?

3,700-year-old Wine Cellar

{image_1}Archaeologists Eric Cline, The George Washington University (USA), and Assaf Yasur-Landau, University of Haifa, have made an exciting discovery—an ancient wine cellar in the ruins of a Canaanite palace at Tel Kabri, near the modern town of Nahariya in northern Israel. 

King Solomon’s Mines?

{image_1}Since the Victorian novel King Solomon’s Mines first came out in 1885, the legendary mines of the biblical Israelite king have captured the imaginations of millions of readers. Timna Valley in the Aravah desert was long-considered to be one of the possible sites of those fabled mines. For millennia, the Timna Valley, containing thousands of mines and hundreds of smelting sites, had been mined for its rich copper ore deposits. 

From Hunter-Gatherer to City-Dweller

{image_1}An extensive archaeological excavation of the Israel Antiquities Authority at Eshta’ol (near Beit Shemesh) is producing amazing finds that provide a broad picture covering thousands of years of development of human society. The finds range from the period when man first started to domesticate plants and animals, instead of searching for them in the wild, until the period when we see the beginnings of proper urban planning.

Christmas Carolers Sing “Burn Kikes”

{image_1}The Anti-Defamation League has come out against an anti-Semitic Christmas broadcast from Romania. Director Abe Foxman says, “This pastoral scene of Romanian carolers singing perverse, bigoted and vicious anti-Semitic lyrics utterly shocks the conscience.” He continued, “Something is wrong in a society where virulent anti-Semitism masquerading as Christmas cheer could appear on public television and no one blinks. It is a throwback reminiscent of the anti-Semitism that pervaded Romania prior to and during the war, which led to the death of tens of thousands of Jews in the Holocaust.”

Urgent Need for Genuine Solution

{image_1}When the world powers met in Geneva, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the opportunity to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In Netanyahu’s address to Putin, Israel’s PM said, “For us, for Israel, the biggest threat against us and against global security is Iran's effort to arm itself with nuclear weapons. Both of our countries have a common goal: we do not want to see Iran with nuclear weapons. Israel's approach is that the international community needs to insist on its positions as expressed in UN Security Council resolutions, i.e. to halt all enrichment, to remove all enriched material, to dismantle the centrifuges and to stop building the facility in Arak.

Rape, Abuse Used as Weapons

{image_1}Syrian women are systematically raped and abused as a means of exacting psychological pressure on their families—“pressuring their male relatives to surrender”—according to a report by a Europe-based rights organization. The report by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network describes the abuses as a “deliberate tactic to defeat the other party from a symbolic and psychological perspective, making women desirable targets as the conflict rages on.”