In addition to Hillel, other Jewish groups were active in Mississippi relief work. Shortly after Katrina struck, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement dispatched a group of emissaries to Biloxi to assist with emergency search-and-rescue efforts.
\”Real Zionism is to encourage all to move to the Negev and the Galilee,\” said Transportation Minister Meir Sheetrit, adding that the key to developing the peripheries lies in improving transportation to the center of the country. Efficient transportation, he said, will change the periphery into suburbia.
The two-day event over Chanukah, dubbed \”Light Up the Negev,\” was organized by the Jewish National Fund-Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (JNF) with the express purpose of \”selling\” the Negev to Israel\’s youth.
Olmert was one of the chief architects of Sharon\’s main foreign policy achievement — last summer\’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank. When Sharon broke away last November from his ruling Likud Party to form a new centrist party, Kadima, Olmert was one of the first to follow him.
Drive into The Brandeis-Bardin Institute, up the pepper tree-lined main thoroughfare and through the gates leading to 3,000 acres of rolling hills in the Santa Susana Mountains. Enter a setting so magnificent that it\’s easy to believe, as Rabbi Ed Feinstein of Valley Beth Shalom does, that God lives there.
The authors propose a new map with \”multiple homelands\” that displaces Israel from \”the center of the Jewish universe.\” They point out that since the mid-19th century, most Jewish religious innovation has originated in the United States, rather than in Europe or Israel. As of 2003, more people emigrated from Israel to Russia than vice versa, and New York is the communal and philanthropic center of Jewish life. Ultimately, the authors find, contemporary Jews are at home wherever they live. \”New Jews,\” they argue, \”connect emotionally and culturally with multiple places and traverse routes across national boundaries but are nonetheless rooted in a specific place they call home.\”
To its detractors, Los Angeles seems very much like a modern-day Sodom or Gomorrah — besotting civilization with a trash culture of celebrity murder trials, reality TV and movies that trade on violence and superficiality.
\”Fish prices have tripled; fish form a significant part of our diet,\” Diamond told The Journal. \”At the rate we\’re going, most of the world\’s major fisheries will be gone within a decade.\”
According to last week\’s Shin Bet report, arms smuggling into Gaza has skyrocketed sixfold since Israel left during the summer. In the West Bank, terrorists have already test fired a rocket in a bid to emulate the tactics of their Gazan comrades.
We\’re not saying we believe any of this, mind you, but, yes, Jews, too, like to peek at horoscopes. But up until now, something\’s been missing — that Jewish touch. Sure, you could count on Bubbe and Zayde to dispense career advice and to forecast general doom, but that hardly suffices. And, yes, there are always those well-meaning, pushy relatives to talk up eligible singles as the man or woman of your future.
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