“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,…
After a half-century, Dead Sea Scrolls coming into the light
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Fifty years after the Dead Sea Scrolls first came to light, biblical scholars around the world are preparing for a major conference on the scrolls that is set to roll — or unroll, as the case may be — July 20 to 25 (1997) at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. While the scrolls have been…
Lower East Side tenement preserved as museum
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An Orthodox Jewish garment presser from Lithuania, Abraham Rogarshevsky was only 45 years old when he succumbed to tuberculosis in July 1918. He died at home, surrounded by his family in their tiny three-room apartment on New York’s Lower East Side. Although there was nothing particularly remarkable or historic about Mr. Rogarshevsky — no more…
St. Regis: New York’s most expensive hotel
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Fresh from a $100 million renovation, New York’s prestigious St. Regis Hotel, situated on 55th St. at Fifth Avenue, is the epitome of luxury hotels in Manhattan. The St. Regis is definitely not for the budget-minded. The lowest category of room (“superior”) commands $350 per night: a “grand luxe” room costs $450, a “grand suite”…
Obit: Admiral Antony Storrs (1907-2002)
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Antony Storrs, the Canadian rear admiral who led a vital minesweeping operation in advance of the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, has died in Victoria, B.C. at the age of 95. Adm. Storrs was the leader of the 31st Mine Sweeping Flotilla, a Canadian naval unit that cleared the waters around the…
Obit: Dr. Arthur Squires (1909-2002)
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Dr. Arthur Squires, former chief of medicine at Toronto’s Wellesley Hospital, was such an outstanding physician that many of his patients, colleagues and friends formed the Squires Club, an organization to honour him upon his retirement in 1974. Although Dr. Squires died in late June at the age of 92, the Squires Club lives on.…
Obit: J. Murray Speirs (2001)
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J. Murray Speirs was six when he spotted the colourful ruby-crowned kinglet that sparked his lifelong interest in birds, and when at 15 he turned in earnest to the study of nature and especially birds, he began to fill a little black notebook with meticulous notes of every bird he saw. He kept up the…
