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War on Children

Life in Israel

Something of Home for Everyone

I chose to take my first trip to Israel in the winter. To my uninformed mind, the choice made perfect sense. Israel, I believed, was a desert country, a barren strip of sandy expanses and rocky outcrops, interspersed by the Sea of Galilee, Jordan River and other water bodies made famous by Scripture. Summers would

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Hebron: City of Promise

We are traveling 20 miles south of Jerusalem to the city of Hebron along Route 60, a modern freeway that follows the ancient Path of the Patriarchs. The beautiful terraced hills of Judea are covered with abundant vineyards and olive groves—a reminder of the legendary grape cluster carried back to Joshua on the shoulders of

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Hiking the “Salad Trail”

Recently, our Bridges for Peace family of volunteers spent two fun-filled days exploring a bit of southern Israel. “The Salad Trail,” one of the sites on our itinerary immediately grabbed my attention. I love to hike but adding the word “salad” to the mix left me pondering just what type of trail this might be?

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“To Life!” Guide to a Jewish Wedding

To life, l’chaim, l’chaim, L’chaim, l’chaim, to life, It takes a wedding to make us say, “Let’s live another day,” Drink l’chaim, to life! “To Life!” is a song from the quintessential Jewish musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” where the people of Anatevka rejoice over the upcoming wedding of Tevye’s daughter. From time immemorial, weddings

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Simchat Torah – Rejoicing with the Beloved

ChameleonsEye/shutterstock.com Thousands of years ago, King David poured out his passion for the Word of God in a skillful song. “Oh how I love Your Torah!” he sang, “It is my meditation all the day” (Ps. 119:97). Today, some three millennia later, the same heart of love still beats within the descendants of Israel’s famous

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Snorkeling in Eilat: a Rookie’s Perspective

“It’s going to be hot.” That’s what everyone told me when I packed my bags for a short weekend trip down to the southernmost tip of Israel. After all, my friends and I were traveling in the dead heat of summer, traversing the southern desert on the road trip equivalent to a jaunt through an

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Rehavia!

Jerusalem is one of the oldest inhabited cities on earth and for most of its long history it has been contained within the walled Old City. However, in 1860 the first Jewish neighborhood, Mishkenot Sha’ananim—Hebrew for peaceful habitation—was built outside those ancient walls. In the ensuing 150 years, the city has continued to expand its

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Yom Kippur War—42 Years Later

6 October 1973 dawned without a hint of the perils to come. It was the Day of Atonement—or Yom Kippur in Hebrew—the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. And the people of Israel observed it the way their fathers and their fathers’ fathers did for countless generations—prostrated in fasting and prayer. Since sundown the night

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Restoring Paradise: Introducing Biblical Species Back to the Land

 It was 1978 and the streets of Tehran echoed with the sounds of gunshots and wild mobs screaming, “Death to America! Death to Israel!” Iran was reeling under a volatile political inferno, soon to explode into the full-blown Islamic Revolution. Trying to dodge angry demonstrators and stray bullets, a lone man hurried through the streets,

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Tastes of Jerusalem

There are many sights in the Promised Land that capture your heart like nowhere else on earth. The flag of Israel unfurling against the white stones of the Western Wall, the silhouette of ancient fishing boats, bobbing hazily on the Sea of Galilee and the tiny cobbled streets weaving through Jerusalem’s Old City have all

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