It's often called the most difficult 48-hour period in Israeli life. From memorial to celebration - Yom Hazikaron to Yom Ha'atzmaut - Israelis switch gears in a manner in which the human psyche was not designed.
Voices Category: Life in Israel
On Zicaron (Remembering)
by Yehudit Werchow on April 23, 2012
“And how does one stand in a Memorial Ceremony? Erect or bent,
rigid like a tent or limp as in mourning,
head humbled like the guilty or raised in defiance against death,
eyes wild or frozen like the eyes of the dead,
or shut, to view the stars within?”
"Open Closed Open" -Yehudah Amichai
Purim in Israel
by David Kramer on March 6, 2012
Anyone who has recently visited an Israeli Purim costume store will soon realize that Purim is not just for little kids but rather, a reason or ‘excuse’ for people, of all ages and orientations, to dress up and express their inner-selves in the weirdest and most elaborate ways.
Why is There No Presidents Day in Israel?
by Adam Stewart on February 17, 2012
Perhaps the first question should be: “Why is there no Presidents Day in the U.S.?” Despite popular convention, the holiday that we will celebrate in the U.S. this week is officially Washington’s Birthday. In 1968, Robert McClory, a congressman from Illinois, proposed a Bill, which would consolidate Lincoln’s Birthday and Washington’s birthday into one federal holiday. The Bill never passed, but advertisers and some state legislatures have pushed the name “Presidents Day” as both more representative of all of our great presidents, and somehow easier to sell cars and appliances.
Yom Hamishpacha
by Sophie Fellman ... on February 15, 2012
Having lived in the US for four years on Shlichut and then being back in Israel for six years, I had forgotten what it feels like here when “secular” holidays roll around. Christmas and Easter are pretty clear cut, they “don’t belong to us”. Valentine’s Day and Halloween sort of do, but then there is that tension…do we do it? Don’t we? Do we but feel funny about it?
As a parent this time around, it’s even more interesting to observe. It’s all around us, yet the children are oblivious about it and it hasn’t been mentioned in school.
Remembering Ilan Ramon: Astronaut & Educator
by Josh Feigelson on January 24, 2012
Yadoa teda ki ger yihyeh zarecha b’eretz lo-lahem.
Know that your descendents will be strangers in a land not their own.
~ Genesis 15:13
The condition of being a stranger, a ger, is woven into Jewish identity. From Abraham through the present day, to be Jewish is to stand inside and outside ourselves at the same time. It is to be at home and to be a foreigner, or at least to have the awareness that we were once foreigners, at every moment.
Mishpacha L'mishpacha: Reflections on an iChallenge Project
by Anne Stein on January 22, 2012
This past summer Lena Benson and I went to Israel to meet with the people that we were hoping would be our partners in our Mishpacha l’mishpacha project, a project of the iChallenge Ideas Incubator. We had a wonderful meeting and I left feeling good that the program might really work.
Pilgrims meet Israelis in the Western Galilee
by Lori Sagarin on November 21, 2011
What is it about Thanksgiving and Americans? We have a visceral connection to this all-American holiday that makes celebration among American Jews almost universal, even American Jews living abroad.
Movember in Israel
by Naomi Brown on November 16, 2011
November is the month of the mustache. While many causes have been assigned a month – Breast Cancer Awareness month in October, Black History month in February – men around the world are claiming November as their own.
Gilad's Story
by Adam Stewart on October 12, 2011 Today is the first time I have seen Aviva Schalit smile. After over five years in captivity her son is coming home. A nation takes a big sigh of relief, and the woman who has become Israel’s conscience – an Israeli “every”-mother, can go back to being an actual mother.
Pages
