VIDEO: Ben Gurion proclaims the State of Israel and then says a ‘shechecheyanu’

Thursday, May 15, 2008

New generation has a new take on Israel

By Julie Gruenbaum Fax

Earlier this spring, David Weiner, a 32-year-old social studies curriculum publisher from Los Angeles, went on an unlikely pairing of back-to-back missions to Israel.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

For Israeli ex-pats, the homeland is calling

By Ayala Or-el

Merav and Roy Lobel are going back to Israel. Since the birth of their baby boy, now eight months old, they have longed to be with their families. Each time they've hung up the phone after a call to Israel, they've felt as if part of their heart was still there.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

What Israel means to me

Tovah Feldshuh


"I love, admire, and will eternally raise money for Israel because I am well aware that she takes bullets for me. She is my life insurance."



Judd Hirsch


"It's not easy to understand how a nation can reclaim itself after 5,000 years of banishment, occupation, and inhumane treatment by so many peoples of the world...

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Festival-goers this year can party under the moonlight

By Celia Soudry

For Yoram Gutman, the Israel Independence Day Festival is a yearlong effort.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Hollywood-Israel link flourishing

By Tom Tugend

A group of hotshot Hollywood television executives sit around a table sipping Evian water, working their cellphones and bemoaning the lack of fresh ideas for a series to pull their network out of the cellar.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

A birthday gift

By David Suissa

Here we are, Jews in every corner of the world, awash in a frenzy of celebrations for Israel -- all because of a birthday. And not just any birthday, mind you, but one that ends in a zero.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Nation might not be safest but it’s the most interesting

By Stuart Schoffman

Not too far from my home there's a street named for the German poet Heinrich Heine, a baptized Jew and metaphorical Marrano. Sometimes on Shabbat afternoons, I take a long Jerusalem walk with my son, soon to be a soldier, and Lizzie, our German shepherd, a breed of dog that in my wildest Diaspora dreams I could never imagine owning.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Israel faces challenges on three fronts

By Sergio DellaPergola

Israel at 60 faces three major challenges: identity, technology and politics. The future Israel will have to strive and struggle to maintain a credible role as the cultural and spiritual center of Jewish peoplehood. Demography will continue to play a fundamental role here, but the main challenge will be whether Israel can strengthen internal and transnational Jewish cultural bonds to preserve some consensus among the Jewish people.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

18 essential Hebrew words and phrases

By Dikla Kadosh

In honor of Israel's 60th Birthday, we thought you should learn a few key words and phrases in Hebrew that will bring you closer to Israel's people and culture. This vocabulary will be useful on your next trip to Israel-- or on your next trip to Ventura Boulevard. Delight your Israeli friends, teach your kids or impress a date. What better way to mark this milestone in Jewish history than to do a very Jewish thing: learn!

Thursday, May 15, 2008

How to answer the most common anti-Israel charges

By John L. Rosove

Some charges criticizing Israel are distortions and slanted, based on faulty information and half-truths, animus, and even classic anti-Semitism.
However, the situation and history are complex, and unfortunately, Israel is not perfect.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Post-Zionism in a diaspora world

By Tom Teicholz

What does it mean to be a Jew in a Post-Zionist world?

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Israel: A work in progress

By Glenn Yago

From the birth of the Zionist movement more than a century ago through its 60 years as a Jewish state, Israel has come of age amid a vastly changing world: two world wars, the technological revolution and economic globalization with all its attendant challenges.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Through the looking glass with Friends of Sabeel

By Tom Tugend

Covering a meeting of Friends of Sabeel is a strange experience. "Strange" as in walking through the looking glass and encountering a reverse universe on the other side.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

History disproves myth that founding Zionists were naive

By Judea Pearl

We are often told, mostly by anti-Israel propagandists, that the early Zionists' attitude toward the indigenous Arab population in Palestine was laden with ignorance, naivete, denial, contempt, abuse and outright oppression. Afif Safieh, the PLO representative to the United States, tells audiences on campus after campus: "[Palestinians] have suffered three successive denials -- a denial of their mere physical existence, a denial of their national rights and, the most morally disturbing, a denied recognition of their pain and suffering."

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Paradoxes characterize life in Israel

By Yossi Klein Halevi

To be an Israeli at the time of the state's 60th anniversary means to be resigned to living with insoluble emotional and political paradoxes. It means living with a growing fear of mortality, even as we celebrate our ability to outlive every threat. We are almost certainly the only nation that marks its Independence Day with an annual poll that invariably includes the question: "Do you believe the country will still exist 50 years from now?"

Thursday, May 15, 2008

A 15-year plan for Israel

By Gidi Grinstein

At its 60th anniversary, Israel needs a new vision that not only will guide its priorities and inform its actions, but also will be relevant to the lives of all Israelis.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Rabbis work to build ties of U.S. Jews to Israel

By Amy Klein Religion Editor

Twelve years ago, newly arrived at the Reconstructionist Malibu Jewish Center, Rabbi Judith Halevy gave a sermon about her long-term commitment to Israel, about how much she cares about the Jewish state.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Roots, reality and Israel’s 60th

By Jacob Dayan

It is a proud and glorious week as Israel, her 7.2 million citizens and millions of friends around the world celebrate the 60th anniversary of Israel's birth as a modern, democratic nation.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Turning 60 with Israel—just Fed-Ex those Dead Sea anti-aging creams

By Jane Ulman

Israel, girlfriend, what is your problem? Why all this hoopla and hype? Does the whole world have to know that you and I -- hey, break out the Botox -- are turning 60?

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Israeli rapper Subliminal has built a music empire

By Dikla Kadosh

The first song Ya'akov Shimoni ever wrote was called, "Genesis." The lyrics -- in English, Hebrew and French -- were about pollution, global warming, Mother Earth and the destruction of Israel's natural resources. It was 1997 -- long before "An Inconvenient Truth" became a blockbuster and the green movement reached an unprecedented level of hipness.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

The country’s most formidable challenge? Welding its dual identities

By Michael Oren

will never forget my first day in Israel when a group of teenagers pointed at my tallit and laughed. It was the summer of 1970, and, at age 15, I had realized my dream of volunteering on a kibbutz. Raised in an American home in which Conservative Judaism melded effortlessly with moderate Zionism, I never suspected that some Israelis would see contradictions between the two, or that I might someday be forced to choose between them.