Creating a baseball culture in Israel is one of the league\’s biggest challenges and primary goals. In a country where soccer and basketball dominate athletics, will people jump on the baseball bandwagon?
During a Shabbat dinner, I blurted out the idea that maybe we ought to \”marry first and date later.\” Not literally, of course, but in terms of how we approach both dating and marriage.
What do all the current threats facing the Middle East — the Hamas takeover in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah\’s bid for power in Lebanon, political turmoil in Iraq and imminent nu- clear weapons in the hands of a radical dictatorship — all have in common? Answer: Iran.
From the perspective of that child and his or her parents, they are being discriminated against because of the color of their skin. This was part of the context of the recent U.S. Supreme Court cases.
There is a scribal tradition, maintained in every Torah scroll, that testifies to the problematic nature of Pinchas\’ reward. \”I give him my covenant of peace,\” God tells Moses regarding the young priest. But the word for peace, shalom, is defective. The letter vav is inscribed hollow. It is a broken letter, a broken shalom, a peace that can\’t endure.
One year after the Second Lebanon War, Israel\’s northern front is quiet, U.N. forces are patrolling the border area and Hezbollah fighters have been pushed back deep inside Lebanese territory.
My pre-camp seminar with 35 staff members from Israel had just wrapped up, but Avinoam, our 21-year-old Israeli basketball coach for the summer, lingered behind, looking nervous and shaken.
\”We\’re all healing — emotionally, psychologically, ecologically,\” said Paul M. Ginsberg, director of the Forest Department in the Northern Region Office of Keren Kayemeth Leisrael (KKL), the Israeli arm of the Jewish National Fund. He stood on a hillside looking over the Hula Valley, north of the Sea of Galilee. At his back was a hillside forest of trees, many of them charred from last summer\’s rocket fire.
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