Modern Tel Aviv is just over 100 years old, and today enjoys a reputation as the center of the Middle East’s “Silicon Valley” made into the stuff of legend thanks to the book Start-up Nation. With Israel and Germany having celebrated the jubilee of their diplomatic relations last year, the new phase of the Berlin-Tel Aviv partnership, and more broadly the German-Israeli relationship, is now ripening in the field of start-ups.
Jewish Journal, November 11, 2016 An hour before the initial election results came in, attorney Marc Zell, co-chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel, took out a chart of American states and crunched numbers. He predicted Donald Trump would take Kentucky, Indiana, Georgia and South Carolina — that’s 44 electoral votes. “If Georgia is too close to call, that’s a bad sign,” he said. He entered the main hall of the iconic Mike’s Place on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem at about 1 a.m. local time (3 p.m. PST) to optimistic greeters. He was carrying a box of “Make America Great Again” caps to give out to some 200 Trump supporters and volunteers who united there on election night, although some were already wearing them, like William Eicoff, a resident of the city of Ariel in the West Bank and proud Florida voter. Read the rest here
Team Trump Pulls Tense Jerusalem All-nighter Read More »
Now those feelings of enthrallment I felt as a new Israeli have come back for Berlin.
Making Aliyah to Berlin Read More »
Jewish Journal, Nov. 2, 2016 Yehuda Poliker was born in a Haifa, Israel, suburb two years after the founding of the State of Israel, to Greek Jews who survived the deportation from Thessaloniki to Auschwitz. Today, he is considered an Israeli musical icon, having reached career peaks coveted by any Israeli artist: hit singles, platinum albums, sold-out stadiums and the Lifetime Achievement Award of ACUM, Israel’s artist rights agency. Poliker, however, says he has never been motivated by accolades. “I don’t think in terms of ‘icon,’ ” he told the Jewish Journal via email, in Hebrew. “The one thing that has guided me throughout the years is a love for guitar and music. That’s what drives me. The connection music has with people moves me every time anew.” Read the rest in the Jewish Journal
Israeli Yehuda Poliker brings Greek-infused music to UCLA Read More »
Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, September 30, 2016 A few years ago, Yael Merlini wasn’t sure she and her family could stay in Germany. Her children, ages 7, 11 and 15, were the only Jews in their school in Giessen, a town near Frankfurt. The Jewish population numbered fewer than 400, mostly elderly Russian Jews. She also experienced anti-Semitism in the form of social slights from colleagues she described as “liberal” Germans. “Our first thought was to go to Israel,” the Italian-born Merlini said in an interview in Hebrew over the phone in Berlin, where she and her family settled a few weeks ago. “But in Israel, with our professions, it’s very hard.” Her German-born husband is an academic; originally from Florence, she’s a teacher. Both had lived in Israel for 10 years, where they met, and together converted to Judaism. I first met Merlini, visibly Orthodox with her tichl (religious headscarf), at the Orthodox Shabbat minyan held in the historic Rykestrasse Synagogue in the upwardly mobile neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg, in former East Berlin. Having survived Kristallnacht, the synagogue today serves as the campus for the Lauder Beth-Zion Elementary School, while its ornate main sanctuary offers a more Reform Shabbat service, equipped with a microphone. At the morning kiddush, as children played and congregants vied for the meat cholent, Merlini effused how members of Kehillat Adass Jisroel (KAJ) community cooked kosher meals for them upon their arrival, helped them
Orthodox Life Blossoms in Berlin Read More »
