Standing in an underground chamber boasting Roman pillars and cobblestones from Herodian times, the group of about 40 tourists in Jerusalem’s Western Wall tunnel, including myself, listened as the guide explained that we had reached the end of the tour and had to retrace our steps back some 450 meters to the entrance. This was…
Uncovering Spain’s Jewish past
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A statue in the Plaza Mayor or main square of Trujillo, Spain, a well-preserved old town of 10,000 inhabitants, is dedicated to its most illustrious citizen, the conquistador Francisco Pizarro, conqueror of Peru. The Pizarro family built a handsome mansion in the Plaza Mayor about 1560. Its facade is decorated with carved images of the…
Community mourns passing of Pierre Elliott Trudeau (2000)
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Note: This obituary appeared in the London Jewish Chronicle shortly after Trudeau’s passing on September 28, 2000. Former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who died last week at the age of 80, is being remembered as a staunch defender of minority rights and a friend of the Jewish community. Trudeau served as prime minister…
A visit to Zippori in Lower Galilee
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The Talmud says that the town of Zippori, in the Lower Galilee northwest of Nazareth, was so named “because it is perched on the top of a mountain like a bird [zippor].” Also perched on this picturesque mountain, roughly 1,800 years ago, was the Sanhedrin, the grand rabbinic-judicial council of ancient Israel, whose head, Rabbi…
Two books on the Jews of Montreal
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From the Ghetto to the Main: The Story of the Jews of Montreal, by Joe King, is a masterly treatment of more than two and half centuries of Jewish history in what was once the largest Jewish community in the Dominion of Canada. King sets the stage for his subject in five chapters that sketch…
Another side of the Kinneret
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“We’re just about to cross the River Jordan,” says our guide, Mike Rogoff, as our van approaches a bridge traversing a gulley of greenery. “So don’t blink and don’t sneeze, or you’ll miss it. This is not the St. Lawrence. The people who wrote those marvelous spirituals — ‘the River Jordan is deep and wide’…
Neot Kedumim: Biblical nature reserve
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“A staff shall grow out of the trunk of Jesse, and an offshoot shall flourish from its roots.” — Isaiah 11:1. Multitudes of biblical and Talmudic-era plants grow at Neot Kedumim, a 625-acre nature reserve that was once so barren that its founder had to cart up topsoil from the valleys to cover the rocks…
A goat farm near Jerusalem
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Shai Zeltzer, wearing a long white beard and white apron, brings a sampling of white goats’ cheese to our table at his goat farm in Sataf in the Judean hills, a few miles outside Jerusalem. Many Israelis regularly make the drive through the region’s winding hills to buy Zeltzer’s cheeses, which have won acclaim in…
McVay battles Holocaust deniers on the web
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Thanks to the efforts of a former computer salesman, a town on Vancouver Island, Canada, has become Mission Control in the international war against Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis who use the Internet to spread their messages of hate and historical revisionism. Ken McVay, who is 54, had been unemployed for four months when he discovered…
The Israeli Supreme Court
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“Justice, justice, shall you pursue.” — Deut. 16:20. Ten years after it opened, Israel’s magnificent Supreme Court building still embodies the ideals of a just and humanitarian democratic society, and still remains what my guide, Amir Orly, calls “the pearl of Israeli architecture.” The structure sits in an exclusive and stately setting in central Jerusalem,…
