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Towards the middle of the 1960’s, a new kibbutz was established at Tel Avdon in the Western Galilee. A lot of effort went into building it, but no trace remains – besides on the movie screen. The kibbutz was established so that Sophia Loren, who at the time was at the height of her beauty and charm not long after winning the Oscar for Best Actress, could wiggle her hips there while wearing short shorts and a blue shirt. The gorgeous Italian movie star landed in Israel on July 29, 1964. She toured the country for ten days before starting[…]

In the first years following the October Revolution, the new Soviet State was suffering from a famine. The attempt to contain a ‘new economic policy’ was a big failure, and people living in cities and villages were forced to stand in line for hours to buy basic commodities such as bread, salt, matches and heating oil. And if they were lucky, they would also get a bit of herring. Despite the famine, the communist regime continued to export grain to other countries, hoping to convey to the outside world that it was a success story. One of those images of[…]

“In our home, we didn’t talk about anything related to the Holocaust or the pogroms,” recounts Ilana Bar-Gil from Modi’in. “I was in shock when my mother began receiving reparations from Germany. And then, little by little, she started telling us what had happened. In 1945, my mother, Dina, was nine years old, the middle child of six siblings. She doesn’t remember a lot about the pogroms, but does remember being hungry all the time. They would rummage through garbage cans for food. One day, she found a piece of bread covered with rat droppings. But because she was so[…]

Roseanne Barr has just turned 70. It’s an excellent opportunity to take a close look at the high-profile, complicated and volatile Judaism of one of the most influential, controversial and oftentimes successful women in the American television and entertainment industry. Despite the broad-based consensus regarding her importance in the world of American comedy, as well as the brilliance of the good seasons of the trailblazing sitcom Roseanne – somewhere around the end of the 1980’s and early 1990’s – taking her seriously was a thing that was hard to take seriously. Yet, even when her remarks were confused, not always[…]

During Sukkot, ushpizin – Aramaic for guests – are invited to the sukkah. According to the Jewish faith, the spirits of exalted ushpizin come to the sukkah on each day of the seven days of the holiday. One of them heads the ‘delegation’ and the others accompany him. The order of the ushpizin visits varies somewhat between Ashkenazi and Sephardi traditions. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are always the first three guests, and that protocol is not up for debate. But after them, the order of the visits of Joseph, Moses, Aaron and David can vary between the Ashkenazi custom which[…]

From 1502 to 1504, the Inquisition in Cordoba conducted an investigation against Juan de Cordoba Membreque, a judge and one of the city’s elders. Those titles were of no use to him when forced to contest a serious allegation that reflected the spirit of the time. He was accused of observing the “fast of the Jews” in his home and, to make matters worse, in the company of other people. The charges relied on testimony provided by a Muslim female servant who worked in the judge’s home. She testified that the master of the house and his guests bathed, put[…]

She had plenty of reasons not to go to Moscow. Israel was less than a month old, the War of Independence was raging, and she was in the middle of a fundraising campaign in the United States. She had left Kiev when it was still part of the Russian Empire. She was 8 years old when her family emigrated to the United States in search of livelihood and a new life. She didn’t even speak Russian. And, in general, there was finally an independent Jewish state and she wanted to be in Israel. On the other hand, she was an[…]

In the midst of the uproar surrounding the ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States that overturned a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion, many have tried to assess what actual impact the Court’s decision will have. The optimistic interpretation offered by abortion opponents is that the overturning of Roe v. Wade will lead a reduction of about 20 percent in the number of abortions that are performed. But the invention that lowered the abortion rate most dramatically was the birth control pill. So, this time we will talk about three Jewish scientists who were among its inventors.[…]

In 2014, I went to Bosnia to do a story on the rescue of the Sarajevo Haggadah, which is one of the oldest Jewish books in the world. It was rescued by Muslim curators in two different wars – in the Second World War and in the war in the Balkans. The story was told to me by Enver Imamovic, who salvaged the Haggadah in the 1990’s. According to him, in World War II the librarian, Dr. Dervis Korkut, rescued it from the clutches of the Nazi criminal, Johann Hans Fortner, who was sent to Sarajevo to seize the Haggadah[…]