The Saga of a Budapest Family Sukka
Up Against the Wall Walking into the first exhibit hall of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust (at the southern tip of Manhattan Island, just across from the ferry...
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1967 Declassified Comments
Don't Even Think of Moving Fifty years after the Six-Day War and the reunification of Jerusalem, Israel’s state archives released the government protocols and stenographic records from the war. These choice quotations from the Ministerial...
Heroes on the Walls of Haifa
The First Crusade In 1071, the Byzantine Empire was dealt a crippling blow when a tribe of Mongolians conquered Anatolia, today a popular tourist destination in Turkey. The Seljuks, as they were called, had left...
Nabateans in the Bible
Rekhab's Children? An entire chapter of Jeremiah (35) is devoted to the story of the descendants of Jehonadab son of Rekhab, a leader of Israelite king Jehu’s purge of idolators. It tells of their unusual...
Red Rose of Petra
Petra, the mysterious capital located in Jordan, is without a doubt the jewel in the Nabatean crown. Named for the red rock out of which it was carved (petrae is Latin for “rock”), the city...
A Man unto Himself
Controversial, Conservative - and Revolutionary Rabbi Despite Schlesinger’s rigid and often extreme religious views and his distaste for even minor change, which should have endeared him to the Old Yishuv (the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in...
Shofar – Blasting Away
Sounding the Alarm Reverberating throughout Elul (the last month of the Jewish year, roughly corresponding to August/September) and climaxing on the High Holy Days, the blast of the shofar has changed little since it was...
Don’t Call Me Joseph
Who Was Josephus? Two thousand years after his death, Josephus remains controversial, admired by some and loathed by others, as if the historic events he reported occurred just yesterday. His insights into the turbulent Second...
Through Lions’ Gate
From Tel Yosef to IDF What are your roots? I was born on Kibbutz Tel Yosef, in the Jezreel Valley. My parents had come separately to Mandate Palestine from Ukraine during the third wave of...
Paving the Past
Limestone or Marble? As a Jew trying to tell the history of his people to a non-Jewish audience, Josephus, the Jewish historian of the Second Temple period, was clearly in a delicate position. At the...
Lost in Eilat
Red Sea Port Traversing the rickety road from the Israeli port of Eilat to its Egyptian equivalent in Taba, past thousands of imported cars lined up in spectacular order, glinting in Eilat’s glaring sun, it’s...
