Educational Experiences in Israel
On my most recent visit to Israel – in preparation for this summer’s URJ Sci-Tech Israel program – I noticed the presence of U.S. companies. Throughout Israel’s “Silicon Wadi,” the counterpart to our Silicon Valley, are research and development facilities for Google, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and others, intermixed with a vast array of Israeli start-ups, including Mobile-Eye, Orcam, StoreDot, and others. The foundations for many of these research collaborations were establish during Israel’s third decade from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. Motorola, the first U.S.... Read More
As solemn memory turned to glorious celebration, I stood on the balcony of my friend’s apartment in Rehavia, a neighborhood in Jerusalem. We listened to the partiers on the streets around us and craned our necks to spot the fireworks in the distance. It was Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israel’s birthday, a day of loud music and barbeque parties. We had just mourned those who fell in war and terrorist attacks on Yom HaZikaron, and as night deepened, our tears, and the country’s tears, were turning into joy. We collectively moved from loss to festivity. It was also the very end of my first year of... Read More
This week I am preparing for Passover, a joyous holiday in which we commemorate our people’s journey from bondage to freedom. Freedom is a theme that resonates for me, not simply as a philosophical topic for discussion at an upcoming seder, but as a down-to-earth ideal that motivates my daily actions. These days, I spend my time working with a group of people who have tasted the bitterness of slavery, torture, and hardship, and who long for freedom, the African asylum-seeking community in Israel. Seven years ago, when I moved to Israel with my three daughters and my husband, who served... Read More
Mishenichnas Adar marbin b'simcha. When Adar enters, we increase joy. -- Babylonian Talmud, Ta’anit 29a Despite the imperative to be joyous during the Hebrew month of Adar, I cried recently at the Kotel (Western Wall) during Rosh Chodesh services marking the new month. Thankfully, my tears were tears of joy and excitement. In fact, Adar will never be the same for me. I last worshipped with Women of the Wall at a Rosh Chodesh service in the summer of 1989, when the wife of one of my graduate school professors encouraged me to attend. That morning, I joined a group of... Read More
Last month at Independence Hall in Tel Aviv, our guide off-handedly mentioned that if we wanted to read a great speech, we should read the speech Golda Meir gave in Chicago. Immediately, I Googled the speech. It was January of 1948 and the Jews in Palestine already were fighting neighboring Arabs on a regular basis. Convoys of cars going up to Jerusalem were being ambushed; skirmishes were breaking out all through the country. To help finance the fighting, David Ben-Gurion sent Golda Meir to the United States to raise funds from the American Jewish... Read More
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