Jerusalem Knights Festival 2013

Jerusalem Knights Festival 2013

The Jerusalem Knights Festival takes place every year in the Old City of Jerusalem. It’s a time when people from around the world flock to the country’s capital to witness a truly unique gathering featuring top performers.

Discovering and Sailing a 2,000-year-old Boat

Discovering and Sailing a 2,000-year-old Boat

At the foot of the Sea of Galilee, 76 miles from Jerusalem, is the Yigal Allon Center (or the Man in the Galilee Museum), named for one ofboat the founders of Kibbbutz Ginosar,Yigal Allon. Allon went on to become Minister of Education and Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister.

Beit Lechem Street Festival (Sept. 22nd, 2013)

Beit Lechem Street Festival (Sept. 22nd, 2013)

The annual Baka Street Fair took place 22 days ago on Derech Beit Lechem in the Baka (Geulim) neighborhood of Jerusalem. It allowed both well-known musicians and lesser known groups from around the country to show off their skills, for local shop owners to market their trinkets, and for the general public (me included) to have an awesome time.

U.S. Cuts Aid to Egypt: Is Obama an Idiot, a Muslim, or a Closet Anti-Semite? You Decide…

U.S. Cuts Aid to Egypt: Is Obama an Idiot, a Muslim, or a Closet Anti-Semite? You Decide…

Israel National News reported today that the U.S. State Department made an ill-conceived move that may endanger the Israel-Egypt peace treaty signed by Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat following the Yom Kippur War. One of the results of the treaty was that the U.S. promised millions in economic and military aid to Egypt, perhaps the most powerful Arab state.

Tapas, Beer and Music

Tapas, Beer and Music

Maalot is a small, quaint, European-style restaurant featuring tapas, which chef and co-owner, Gad Yaari, borrowed from the Spanish cuisine and combined with the traditional food of his grandparents who came from Greece, Bulgaria, Iran, Turkey, Iraq and Kurdistan.

An Interview with Translator and Author, Peter Wyetzner

An Interview with Translator and Author, Peter Wyetzner

Peter Wyetzner and I met when I moved to Jerusalem from Efrat having finished my studies at Yeshivat Ha’mivtar. That was in August of 2011. That’s when I saw a Janglo ad for a room on Derech Beit Lechem. Peter just happened to have been looking for a new roommate.

Freedom

Freedom

How sweet is freedom When winds of oppression strike near to heart How sweet are free and tranquil winds When others hail freedom from afar And take no notice of…

Guarding Your Eyes: The Key to Happiness

Guarding Your Eyes: The Key to Happiness

I’ve been asked on more than one occasion: What’s the key to happiness? I think that more than any other factor, the key to my own happiness is guarding my eyes: preventing myself from looking at things I shouldn’t be looking at both online, on t.v. and in the world at large.

Bazelet—the Golan Beer

Bazelet—the Golan Beer

Who would drive 105 miles for a beer? When you visit the visitors’ center in Katzrin, the capital of the Golan Heights, in the reception area is a large kosher dairy restaurant combined with a coffee shop and store selling organic dried fruits, olive oil, chocolates, natural cosmetics, wines from Golan wineries and Bazelet beer from the Golan Brewery.

Top 10 Reasons I Support Moshe Feiglin for PM

Top 10 Reasons I Support Moshe Feiglin for PM

Moshe Feiglin has always made a good impression on me. The one time I met him (I drove him from O’Hare to where he was staying in Chicago when he was visiting there a few years ago), he candidly spoke to me about his vision and his plans for the future. Unlike a vast majority of Israeli politicians, he wasn’t the least bit haughty. I didn’t sense an aura of indispensability.

Hanging Things on a Tree During and Before Shabbat

Hanging Things on a Tree During and Before Shabbat

A Mishna in masechet Shabbat2 lists kotzer (reaping) as one of the avot melachot. The definition of kotzer is detaching a living thing from its source of nourishment3. This melacha applies even to things that are not growing from the ground. For example, the Gemorah says that a person transgresses Shabbat if he removes mushrooms that grow on the edge of a bucket, since they receive their nourishment from the water that is located there4.

Does the World Hate Us? A דרשה By Ze’ev Ben Yechiel

Does the World Hate Us? A דרשה By Ze’ev Ben Yechiel

Israeli Jews often find themselves feeling as if “the world hates us;” as if everyone is “out to get us.” It might be true that the anti-Semitism of things that Zhabotinsky talked about in his works, the concept that the Nations detest us not necessarily for who we are–but for our national history and for the things that represent us–is alive and well, but does the entire world really hate us? I strongly doubt it.

Two Sides of a Coin: On Parshat Bereshit

Two Sides of a Coin: On Parshat Bereshit

There’s a popular saying that there are “two sides to a coin.” In last week’s Torah reading, we witnessed the creation of the world. Throughout the פרשה, we witnessed a lot of “two-sided coins.”