Segula Editorial

Old Sparks, New Vessels Hasidism emerged with unexpected success at the dawn of modernity thanks to Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov’s skillful fusion of folk wisdom and religious ecstasy. He subtly wove innovation into the...

Going with the Flow Levi Eshkol may not have been the greatest orator in Israeli history, but his masterful management of the country’s scant water sources facilitated Zionist settlement and made the Negev desert bloom...

. Sheriff of Tel Aviv Meir Dizengoff didn’t actually found Tel Aviv, but as its first mayor he reigned there supreme, building the first Hebrew-speaking city since the biblical period. And Dizengoff created this “Israeli...

.   Conspiracy or Contagion? Long before covid-19, the fledgling State of Israel battled deadly epidemics in its immigrant absorption camps. Yemenite infants were the hardest hit, and inadequate record-keeping meant that many fell through...

.   Counting the Hours When did people begin telling time? Many ancient societies divided day and night into units whose length or number varied with the seasons. What advantages did variable-length hours provide, and...

.   Salonika’s Mystical Quartet At the Ottoman Empire’s western gate, four kabbalists – Solomon Molkho and rabbis Yosef Taitazak, Yosef Karo, and Shlomo Alkabetz – gathered to usher in Israel’s redemption, each in his...

- - Voice behind the Iron Curtain // Zvi Golany Israel’s USSR Liaison Bureau saw Nehama Lipshitz as its one-man “Light Music Department,” broadcasting directly to the heart of Russian Jewry. Ditching a Lithuanian opera...

49 - The Price of Dissent // Moti Benmelech Uriel da Costa paid many times over for the changes he made in his life. He sacrificed a comfortable livelihood in Portugal for the true faith he found in...