Sorrow and Hope

Dispatch from Jerusalem

A New Page for Israel

  The new year is traditionally rung in to the soundtrack of well-wishes. In the days, hours and minutes before bidding farewell to the old year and stepping into the new, friends, family and perfect strangers typically great each other with words of hope for peace, love, joy and everything precious and beautiful in the

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The Quirks of Israel—Life is a Song

  From the pen of CEO Peter Fast comes the ninth installment of the Quirks of Israel. Join Peter on a journey through the wonderfully peculiar culture, traditions, heritage and daily life of this singular nation as he unpacks, introduces and celebrates the quirky aspects that make Israel so wonderfully unique. Jerusalem is a city

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Pomegranate and Apple Sukkot Strudel

Sukkot is a week-long festival centered around rejoicing and thanksgiving in God’s protection and provision. The feast is synonymous with building a sukkah (or sukkot for plural), a hut-like structure that serves as a reminder of the flimsy shelters the Israelites lived in during their 40 years in the desert following the Exodus from Egypt.

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To Life!

July 12, 2023

  The images grip your heart. A broken father—grief streaming in rivulets down his cheeks—rocking the lifeless body of his two-year-old daughter after the toddler and her pregnant mother were supposedly killed in an Israeli airstrike. A mother’s tears pooling on the picture of a beaming preschooler—riotous curls framing an angelic face—as she cradles the

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Missing: A Palestinian Partner for Peace

July 12, 2023

  People often talk about the two-state solution to the Israeli­–Palestinian conflict. It’s simple, they argue. Divide up the land. Allow Israel to keep a portion of it, and give the other portion to the Palestinians—including eastern Jerusalem, Gaza and a large parcel of Judea and Samaria. These are actually the terms the Jewish leaders

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How the Media Frames It

July 12, 2023

  In September 2000, the New York Times published an Associated Press picture to give readers a peak at the horrors of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. They chose well. The picture spoke the proverbial thousand words. The image portrayed a dark-haired youth—rivulets of blood from multiple head wounds staining his white shirt crimson; his face a

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Two Ways to Fight: One Way to Win

July 12, 2023

  Israel is a tiny country in a tough neighborhood, surrounded by Muslim-majority states, several of whom would love to wipe the Jewish state off the map. But the tiny Jewish nation in its short 75 years has developed a defense strategy that is defined by the saying: “The best defense is offense.” Deterrence and

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On Foot Through Israel

July 12, 2023

  Have you ever longed to take on an epic quest? Perhaps visiting the Land of Israel on a tour would fulfill such a pursuit for you. But there are also those who long to experience the Land in a more intimate and epic way. For those people—both Israelis and visitors alike—only hiking the Israel

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To Israel with Love

July 12, 2023

  Judaism is rich with examples of giving and the act itself is taught from a very early age. In a blog entry entitled “What is the Jewish Tradition of Giving?” author Jacquelyn DeGroot defines the motivation for giving in this way: “To sustain the Jewish people, to enhance the Jewish life and to strengthen

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Circus of the Absurd

July 12, 2023

  In 2022, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) condemned Israel more times than it did all the other countries in the world combined. UNGA passed a total of 28 resolutions rapping a specific nation across the knuckles. Fifteen of these resolutions criticized Israel, while 13 condemned various other countries, like Russia, Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar,

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