Sorrow and Hope

Dispatch from Jerusalem

Passover Coconut Macaroons

There is something incredibly satisfying about biting into a chewy, decadent coconut macaroon. Maybe it’s the fact that most are dipped in dark chocolate (which naturally makes everything taste better). Coconut macaroons are a well-loved Passover dessert, becoming a traditional Pesach staple in the late-1800s. To mix up your Seder meal this year, try one

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Israel on the Move

An Inspiration to the World “How unlikely was Israel’s birth; how more unlikely has been her survival. And how confounding, and against the odds, has been her thriving. You have turned the desert into a garden, scarcity into plenty, sickness into health, and you turned hope into a future.  “Israel is like a tree that

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Taking Off Soon!: Israel’s New Ilan and Asaf Ramon International Airport  

Come September 2018, the Promised Land will boast a new airport—the first civilian flight center built in Israel since the country’s rebirth 70 years ago. In the six months before the first planes are set to land and take to the skies—as engineers, designers and contractors put finishing touches on the runways, terminal and amenities—Israeli

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Running Where the Prophets Walked

On marathon day, everything in Jerusalem comes to a halt. Everything except 30,000 runners, that is. Every spring, Jerusalem’s historic streets clear for thousands of runners from Israel and around the world to stream through the city during the Jerusalem Winner’s Marathon. The marathon started back in 2011 when Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, an avid

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UN-funding UNWRA

America’s new approach to the UN has set the diplomatic world on its ear. First it was US Ambassador Nikki Haley’s in-your-face-with-the-truth diplomacy, calling the UN out for its long history of anti-Israel bias. Then, the US withdrew from UNESCO. Next, the president of the United States had the chutzpah to agree with Israel that

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Surviving and Thriving, Israeli-style, Israel Celebrates 70 Years

The evening of April 18, 2018 marks the start of Israel’s 70th anniversary and the nation is pulling out all the stops to celebrate. Themed “A Legacy of Innovation,” 70 non-stop hours of partying begin with the biggest fireworks display in the history of the nation. The beaches from Eilat on the Red Sea to

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Learning from Starfish

An international research team, led by the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, has discovered how a beautiful, brainless brittle star can create material similar to tempered glass underwater at ambient conditions. The findings may open new bio-inspired routes for toughening brittle ceramics in various important applications. The Technion researchers uncovered the unique protective mechanism of highly

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Unlocking the Written Word

Children and adults who struggle with dyslexia are often frustrated by their difficulties unscrambling the printed word. Good news from Israel—the Reading Pen, developed by Wizcomtech, can transform those frustrations into understanding. There are devices which scan text and read it aloud to its user. The Reading Pen does more than that—it breaks the words

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Nanomedicine—Hope for Pancreatic Cancer Patients

The word “nano” is a suffix which means “one billionth part” of whatever word it precedes. The result is something that can only be seen under a microscope. Today researchers are developing nanotechnology—the engineering of tiny machines—that can be used in the medical field, thus we arrive at the term “nanomedicine.” Israeli researchers at Tel

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Researchers Decipher Last Two Qumran Scrolls

Dr. Eshbal Ratson and Prof. Jonathan Ben-Dov of the University of Haifa have managed to decipher and restore one of the last two Qumran Scrolls that remain unpublished. Most of the 900 Qumran Scrolls discovered in the 1940s and 1950s have been restored and published. The tiny remaining fragments, some smaller than one square centimeter

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