Enter any Trader Joe’s grocery store in Southern California and you are likely to find vibrant sunflowers with golden orange leaves and a dark center among the bouquets and potted plants. What many customers might not realize is that the sunflower being sold is called Jerusalem Gold, which is grown in Santa Barbara from a seed native to Israel.
The vivid bursts of springtime greens and yellows are not at all like the musty reds and oranges of autumn. Autumn is a season of decline — a time of impending loss, as seeds are hidden and scattered, and leaves fall away. During autumn, the days grow shorter and summer’s abundant power begins to fade to winter’s dormant death.\n
The rains that drenched Israel during a few intense storms this winter did not end the country’s longstanding water shortage, but they did awaken a remarkable range of wildflowers and plants.\n
What is the secret to keeping love alive?\n
For my 18th birthday, my best friend gave me a gift I treasure to this day — a paperback copy of Milton Steinberg’s “As a Driven Leaf.” I had just graduated from Yeshiva of Flatbush high school, where I received a marvelous Jewish education, but where all my questions about theology weren’t exactly welcome.
Israel\’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal by a Muslim prisoner to provide him and his co-religionists in prison with bread during the Passover holiday.\n
When we sit down to our Passover seder tables, as a people we will proclaim that we remember the days when we were not free, when we lived under the yoke of slavery in someone’s else’s land. Then we will extend an invitation to all who are hungry to come and eat with us, for we remember that, too.
The former president of the Technion was the first Israeli scientist to receive a prestigious award in silicon chemistry.
The ex-convict who killed a Canadian Jewish leader in Barbados last year was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
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