What led a young, acculturated Jew from Prague to seek guidance at the court of the Bełz Hasidic master? What brought this spiritual seeker back to his hometown and then to Tel Aviv? And how was that journey linked to this poet’s homosexual
Even antiquity had its celebrity culture, with intellectuals chronicling the lives of the famous. The conversion of an entire royal family to Judaism thus fascinated both the sages and Josephus, who recorded the wondrous deeds of Helene, Mo
Using skills honed over generations, 14th-century scholar Ashtori Ha-parhi wandered the length and breadth of the biblical land of Israel, quadrant in hand, resolving issues that had long troubled the Jewish world
Amichay Schwartz
What prompted the first Anglican bishop in China to seek out the ancient Jewish community of Kaifeng? And why for centuries were missionaries the only ones to transmit word of these Jews westward?
Noam Urbach
In 1850, a radical
Though Israel’s ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students have long been exempt from military service, they weren’t always. In the struggle to secure what became the Jewish state, this camp’s rabbis and public figures were clear that their followers
Kibbutz Ovadia’s unique blend of “Torah and Avoda,” learning and labor, served as a model for religious kibbutzim forming in prestate Israel and beyond – but the demands of this Polish Jewish collective experiment took their toll
Yochanan B
Though most famous as the one-armed defender of Tel Hai, Yosef Trumpeldor was also a Russian patriot, dentist, and pre-kibbutz pioneer of agricultural collectives in the land of Israel. He also cofounded the Jewish Legion, which fought with
The SS Knesset Israel set sail to break the British blockade barring Holocaust survivors from the land of Israel. Packed with young and old from all walks of life, this floating shtetl defied His Majesty’s imperial fleet
Mordechay Saar Marm
101 Treasures from the National Library of Israel | The Massacre That Never Was
Sara Jo Ben-Zvi
101 Treasures from the National Library of Israelby Raquel Ukele
The founders of Kibbutz Sa’ad (literally, “Aid”) didn’t choose that name, but the establishment of this collective between Gaza and Beersheba in 1947 certainly aided in the Negev’s inclusion in the Jewish state
Tamar HaYardeni
W
Diary entries and letters from Trumpeldor’s final days, 1920
January 4
Many have asked: If the French with their rifles and machine guns can’t stand up to the Arabs, how can we […]? None of us doubted the imminence of Arab attack. The que