180219 9th February 2018 Shabbat Shalom dear friends. I hope you are well and my family in North America and the UK are not too cold. Just to make everyone jealous, the weather here has been glorious. Yesterday was 25C and just glorious. The balmy spring weather has persuaded the Shkediot (almond blossom), nuriot (rununculus), the…

180202 2nd February 2018 Shabbat Shalom dear friends. I hope this missive finds you well. With devastating irony, less than one week after the whole world supposedly remembers those who died in the Holocaust, the Polish Parliament passed a law that made it illegal to use the terms “Polish Death Camps” or “Polish Concentration Camps”.  They…

28th January 2018 It was the best of times it was the worst of times, so said Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities. It is a time of huge achievement and a time of unutterable misanthropy, so said Sheila Raviv in Jerusalem. It is with enormous pride that I begin with the great achievement…

180119 19th January 2018 Shabbat Shalom everyone! Gosh three whole weeks since I last wrote and so much has passed!! To start with, the world is a year older, I am a year older and Zvi and I went on a cruise!! The best part of the cruise was being with old friends and meeting new…

131014 14th October 2013 Remembering a Prime Minister and praying for the future It is 18 years since an Israeli Prime Minister was assassinated by a Jewish extremist sending the entire country into a tail spin of emotions. Did Israeli leaders lose the quest for peace through fear of the consequences? No. Unequivocally no. We still…