Presents from the Holy Land have resonance for both the recipient and for Israel, whose economy could use a little boost from American consumers.
Today, Nir Barkat, high-tech entrepreneur and dynamic Jerusalem councilman, is trying to breathe economic life into the city by using the academic and intellectual sectors to jump-start the capital\’s economy.
Business at Eitan Salman\’s music store has fallen 80 percent over the last decade, but it\’s not altogether a bad thing: Mizrahi music has grown so popular in Israel that it no longer is the exclusive domain of mom-and-pop shops like Salman\’s but is sold even at Israel\’s Tower Records outlets.
Judith Aaronson is one of the many people who obtain federally approved drugs from online business brokers, but instead of cost as the motivating factor, it\’s idealism that moves her and other Jews around the country to turn to Israel for their drugs.
Hanging out with a group of Israeli artists at a hot new cafe in Encino may not be the same as sitting on Dizengoff in Tel Aviv, but the conversation is as close as it gets for Los Angeles.
\”We have always intended to go to Israel,\” said Rich Brownstein, an Orthodox Jew from Pico-Robertson. \”And in terms of the perceived danger, I don\’t think it is very different to any other time in Jewish history. They have always been shooting at us, there have always been wars and there have always been difficulties.\”
Raised Conservative and a member of a Reform temple in Seattle, Howard Schultz said it was his first trip to Israel. \”I was blown away. I had a sensory overload,\” he told me for a story in The Jerusalem Post.
Campus activist groups — led by Arabs in Students for Justice in Palestine and Jews for a Free Palestine — had been gaining ground in their campaign for divestment from Israel, to the point where the UCLA Daily Bruin editorially endorsed divestment last July.
Samuel Neaman, philanthropist and former department store chain retailing manager, died in Oceanside on Nov. 13. He was 89.
Rabbi doll sales are just one way that North American Jews are being encouraged to support Israel as the Palestinian intifada enters its third year.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.