Sorrow and Hope

Life in Israel

“Hatikvah”—The Hope

  There is something wonderfully moving about standing among Israelis as their national anthem is sung. As you hear the passion in their voices and see the tears in many eyes, you realize how the words of the “Hatikvah” (The Hope) have shaped the thinking of a nation and helped keep the Zionist dream alive

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Leadership Training Israeli Style

  It’s Friday afternoon in Beit HaKerem, the Jerusalem neighborhood where I live. There are fewer and fewer cars on the road as a pre-Shabbat (Sabbath) hush begins to descend. However, it’s a different story in the park on the other side of Herzl Boulevard, where an exuberantly noisy group of 20–30 young Israeli children

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The Four “Seas” of Israel

  Every tourist shop in the Promised Land stocks a range of brightly colored t-shirts proclaiming that the wearer of the particular garment has dipped a toe in the four “seas” of Israel. The claim is a bit of an overstatement, really. Only two of Israel’s famous waterbodies—the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea—meet the

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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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