August 13, 2021 What does that torn page of a siddur mean? By Barbara Sofer The plain brown envelope is in our Jerusalem mailbox. Inside, protected by a black paper folder, is a torn page from a siddur, a Jewish prayer book. I’m keeping it on my desk, turning it over, thinking about what it […]
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August 6, 2021 The Sofia: The new Tiberias luxury hotel with a Zionist background By Barbara Sofer Sofia is the name of the new classy hotel in Tiberias, and there’s a story behind it. Owners Raul and Sophie Sarogo plan to make Sofia the first in a chain of Israeli five-star boutique hotels that will
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July 30, 2021 Why one religious woman chose to be a surrogate By Barbara Sofer Sara Cohen explained her plans like this to her children, ages 11, nine and six: “If our neighbors were making a cake, got it all ready and then discovered that the oven didn’t work, and they asked us to use
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July 16, 2021 Lest we forget the coronavirus pandemic year By Barbara Sofer Last Tisha Be’av, July 29, 2020, Hinda Hekelman was too sick to fast. She was coughing and weak from the ravages of COVID-19. “My husband, Chaim, and I don’t know where we were infected, but we think it was in the neighborhood
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July 2, 2021 After coronavirus, theater returns music to the lives of Israelis By Barbara Sofer When the variants of the coronavirus are no longer newsworthy, will we remember the variations of the coronavirus rules? Will we recall the feeling the first time we invited our families back for dinner, the first time we saw
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June 18, 2021 A gold standard for aliyah’ Zionism in the face of Israel-hatred today By Barbara Sofer The answer isn’t obvious.I know folks who grew up without knowing who Theodor Herzl or David Ben-Gurion are, who didn’t know the difference between Tu B’shvat and Lag B’omer (and didn’t care), who came to Israel on
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June 4, 2021 Taglit-Birthright Israel is back and just in time By Barbara Sofer Over the past two decades, more than 750,000 young Jews from 68 countries have toured Israel under the auspices of Birthright Israel. We locals got used to seeing the Birthright Israel buses traveling around the country, carrying ebullient university students on their
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May 23, 2021 Celebrating Jewish women’s leadership By Barbara Sofer What, me worry? That was the tagline of Alfred E. Neuman, the mascot and cover boy of Mad magazine, created – who is surprised? – by a Jewish cartoonist named Harvey Kurtzman. What, me worry about the future of the Jewish people? I know the
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May 7, 2021 How my shingles reminded me every day counts By Barbara Sofer I figure it’s just a bug bite. Israeli springtime with its glorious weather and burst of flowers is accompanied by thirsty insects waking up from winter slumber. Somehow, I’ve been stung in the narrow strip between my casquette cap and my
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April 23, 2021 Independence Day: Forks, flypasts and the joy of being Israeli By Barbara Sofer The smooth sand warms my bare soles on the long expanse of Ashdod’s Eleventh Neighborhood Beach. No sign of the recent tar pollution. Israel’s southern beaches were less badly hit than the northern, but not a tar clump remains,
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