Ever since she was a little girl, Portnyansky dreamed of coming to the United States. \”My parents used to get a magazine called Amerika. It had photos and articles about the U.S. In my mind I was already there, from the first grade.\” The opportunity came in 1991, during the last throes of the Soviet Union: She received an invitation from the U.S government to do a concert tour.
Divers can now don their wetsuits and tour the sign-posted remains of the magnificent harbor at Caesarea built by King Herod to honor his Roman patron, Caesar Augustus.
Peace Child Israel was founded in 1988 by the late Israeli actress Yael Drouyanoff and uses theater and other art forms to encourage dialogue between teens who might otherwise never meet. So far, seven groups have been formed, pairing Jewish and Arab towns throughout Israel, among them Misgav-Sakhnin, Raanana-Qalanswa, and East and West Jerusalem.
The best way to discover Mozart here might be a night at the Vienna Opera. I was lucky enough to attend a performance of \”The Magic Flute\” during my visit, which was sponsored by Austria Tourism. This was classical Mozart through and through in terms of the music, but the performance was strikingly modern.
Smashnova-Pistolesi has done it on the go. She was born 28 years ago in Minsk, Belarus. Her family moved to Israel when she was 14. She stays at her parents\’ home in Herzelia when she\’s in the country. She has her own home in Italy, where she lives with her husband, the former pro Claudio Pistolesi.
It suddenly occurred to me that the Holocaust was an attempted silencing of the Jews. While World War II was decades ago — and the camps were liberated — the quiet lingers. We\’re so far away from it all in the United States. In Poland, the wounds are still raw and it isn\’t something that the locals are comfortable talking about.
What better place to visit as civilization teetered at the brink than the repository of much of civilization\’s bounty?
The World Union is the umbrella organization for 1,500 Reform, Reconstructionist, Liberal and Progressive congregations in 44 countries and, Regev estimated, touches the religious, educational and social lives of approximately 2 million Jews.
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