A food bank chairman, a solar energy pioneer and the creator of the “Dry Bones” comic strip are among the first winners of a Nefesh B’Nefesh prize recognizing immigrants to Israel. More than 200 immigrants from English-speaking countries were nominated for the Bonei Zion Prize, which was awarded in five categories as well as for…
When a group of Israelis living in the Riverdale section of the Bronx tried to organize a community bonfire to celebrate the holiday of Lag B’Omer three years ago, the first response they encountered was surprise at the custom, largely unknown to American Jews. When the Israelis explained that they wanted to celebrate the holiday…
More than 10,000 African migrants demonstrated outside Israel’s parliament on Wednesday, extending protests into a fourth consecutive day in a quest for recognition as refugees and freedom to work legally without fear of incarceration. Their presence in a Jewish state that took in survivors of the Nazi Holocaust of World War Two has stoked an…
(JTA) — They marched down Allenby Street today, past the market and the traffic jam of buses and cabs, their chants echoing around buildings and into courtyards. “What we want?” one man yelled. “Freedom!” hundreds chanted. “No more prison!” Most of them Eritrean, most of them men, the crowd swelled as it reached the beach…
Several thousand African migrants protested outside Western embassies in Tel Aviv on Monday, demanding freedom for compatriots jailed by Israel in a desert facility under a new open-ended detention law. “No more prison,” chanted the crowd that packed a Mediterranean beachfront promenade across from the U.S. embassy. Protesters also marched to the French, Italian, British,…
(JTA) — Growing up in the Urals, Pavel Polev was a precocious ice skater and a member of the Soviet Union’s national youth figure-skating team. But in 1992, at age 15, Polev’s life was upended when he joined the massive wave of Jews immigrating to Israel from the crumbling Soviet Union. After serving a mandatory…
Israel welcomed some 19,200 new immigrants in 2013, with French Jews leading the way. The number of new immigrants in 2013 was a modest increase from the 18, 940 who arrived in 2012, the Jewish Agency for Israel said in a statement. The year 2013 saw a 7 percent increase in aliyah from most countries,…
Hundreds of African migrants gathered outside the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem protesting Israel’s policy of detaining asylum seekers were put on buses back to a detention facility. The protesters, holding signs reading “I didn’t choose to be a refugee,” “we are in danger, not dangerous” and “you were strangers in the land of Egypt,”…
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