1.
Israel
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Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Middle East, on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. The country contains geographically diverse features within its small area. Israels economy and technology center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, in 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, next year, the Jewish Agency declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied territories including the West Bank, Golan Heights and it extended its laws to the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, but not the West Bank. Israels occupation of the Palestinian territories is the worlds longest military occupation in modern times, efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have not resulted in peace. However, peace treaties between Israel and both Egypt and Jordan have successfully been signed, the population of Israel, as defined by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, was estimated in 2017 to be 8,671,100 people. It is the worlds only Jewish-majority state, with 74. 8% being designated as Jewish, the countrys second largest group of citizens are Arabs, at 20. 8%. The great majority of Israeli Arabs are Sunni Muslims, including significant numbers of semi-settled Negev Bedouins, other minorities include Arameans, Armenians, Assyrians, Black Hebrew Israelites, Circassians, Maronites and Samaritans. Israel also hosts a significant population of foreign workers and asylum seekers from Africa and Asia, including illegal migrants from Sudan, Eritrea. In its Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a Jewish, Israel is a representative democracy with a parliamentary system, proportional representation and universal suffrage. The prime minister is head of government and the Knesset is the legislature, Israel is a developed country and an OECD member, with the 35th-largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product as of 2016. The country benefits from a skilled workforce and is among the most educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentage of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree. The country has the highest standard of living in the Middle East and the third highest in Asia, in the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term Israeli to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett. The names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have historically used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel. The name Israel in these phrases refers to the patriarch Jacob who, jacobs twelve sons became the ancestors of the Israelites, also known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel or Children of Israel. The earliest known artifact to mention the word Israel as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt. The area is known as the Holy Land, being holy for all Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam
2.
Hebrew language
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Hebrew is a language native to Israel, spoken by over 9 million people worldwide, of whom over 5 million are in Israel. Historically, it is regarded as the language of the Israelites and their ancestors, the earliest examples of written Paleo-Hebrew date from the 10th century BCE. Hebrew belongs to the West Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family, Hebrew is the only living Canaanite language left, and the only truly successful example of a revived dead language. Hebrew had ceased to be a spoken language somewhere between 200 and 400 CE, declining since the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt. Aramaic and to a lesser extent Greek were already in use as international languages, especially among elites and it survived into the medieval period as the language of Jewish liturgy, rabbinic literature, intra-Jewish commerce, and poetry. Then, in the 19th century, it was revived as a spoken and literary language, and, according to Ethnologue, had become, as of 1998, the language of 5 million people worldwide. After Israel, the United States has the second largest Hebrew-speaking population, with 220,000 fluent speakers, Modern Hebrew is one of the two official languages of the State of Israel, while premodern Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world today. Ancient Hebrew is also the tongue of the Samaritans, while modern Hebrew or Arabic is their vernacular. For this reason, Hebrew has been referred to by Jews as Leshon Hakodesh, the modern word Hebrew is derived from the word Ivri, one of several names for the Israelite people. It is traditionally understood to be a based on the name of Abrahams ancestor, Eber. This name is based upon the root ʕ-b-r meaning to cross over. Interpretations of the term ʕibrim link it to this verb, cross over, in the Bible, the Hebrew language is called Yәhudit because Judah was the surviving kingdom at the time of the quotation. In Isaiah 19,18 it is called the Language of Canaan, Hebrew belongs to the Canaanite group of languages. In turn, the Canaanite languages are a branch of the Northwest Semitic family of languages, according to Avraham ben-Yosef, Hebrew flourished as a spoken language in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah during about 1200 to 586 BCE. Scholars debate the degree to which Hebrew was a vernacular in ancient times following the Babylonian exile. In July 2008 Israeli archaeologist Yossi Garfinkel discovered a ceramic shard at Khirbet Qeiyafa which he claimed may be the earliest Hebrew writing yet discovered, dating around 3000 years ago. The Gezer calendar also dates back to the 10th century BCE at the beginning of the Monarchic Period, classified as Archaic Biblical Hebrew, the calendar presents a list of seasons and related agricultural activities. The Gezer calendar is written in an old Semitic script, akin to the Phoenician one that through the Greeks, the Gezer calendar is written without any vowels, and it does not use consonants to imply vowels even in the places where later Hebrew spelling requires it
3.
Independence Day (Israel)
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Independence Day is the national day of Israel, commemorating the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948. It is celebrated either on the 5th of Iyar, according to the Hebrew calendar, or on one of the preceding or following days, Yom Hazikaron, the Israeli Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism Remembrance Day is followed by Independence Day. Independence Day is founded on the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel by the Jewish leadership headed by future Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion on 14 May 1948, the mood outside of Ben-Gurions home just prior to the declaration was joyous, The Jews of Palestine. Independence was declared eight hours before the end of the British Mandate of Palestine, the operative paragraph concludes with the words of Ben-Gurion, where he thereby declares the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. Most of the events take place in Jerusalem, the seat of Israels government. An official ceremony is held every year on Mount Herzl, Jerusalem on the evening of Independence Day, every year a dozen Israeli citizens, who made a significant social contribution in a selected area, are invited to light the torches. Many cities hold outdoor performances in cities squares featuring leading Israeli singers, streets around the squares are closed to cars, allowing people to sing and dance in the streets. Reception of the President of Israel for honouring excellence in 120 IDF soldiers, the event takes place in the Presidents official residence in Jerusalem. International Bible Contest in Jerusalem Israel Prize ceremony in Jerusalem Israel Defense Forces opens some of its bases to the public, Israel Defense Forces parade Hebrew Song Contest Israeli families, regardless of religious observance or affiliation, celebrate with picnics and barbecues. Balconies are decorated with Israeli flags, and small flags are attached to car windows, some leave the flags hoisted until after Yom Yerushalayim. Israeli Television channels air the events live, and classic cult Israeli movies. In response to public feeling, the Chief Rabbinate in Israel decided during 1950–51 that Independence Day should be given the status of a minor Jewish holiday on which Hallel be recited. The Rabbinate also ruled that they were unable to sanction instrumental music, the recitation of the blessing over Hallel was introduced in 1973 by Israeli Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren. The innovation was strongly denounced by his Sephardic counterpart, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Soloveitchik, leader of Modern Orthodox Judaism in America. Other changes to the daily prayers include reciting Hallel, saying the expanded Pesukei DZimrah of Shabbat, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik questioned the Halachic imperative in canonising these changes. In any case, the majority of his students recite Hallel without the blessings, a number of authorities have promoted the inclusion of a version of Al Hanisim in the Amidah prayer. Most Haredim make no changes in their daily prayers, some even fast on this day and recite prayers for fast days. The Conservative Movement read the Torah portion of Deuteronomy 7, 12–8,18, the Reform Movement suggests the inclusion of Yaaleh Vyavo in the Amidah prayer
4.
Jerusalem
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Jerusalem is a city located on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is considered a city in the three major Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, the part of Jerusalem called the City of David was settled in the 4th millennium BCE. In 1538, walls were built around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent, today those walls define the Old City, which has been traditionally divided into four quarters—known since the early 19th century as the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger, Modern Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old Citys boundaries. These foundational events, straddling the dawn of the 1st millennium BCE, the sobriquet of holy city was probably attached to Jerusalem in post-exilic times. The holiness of Jerusalem in Christianity, conserved in the Septuagint which Christians adopted as their own authority, was reinforced by the New Testament account of Jesuss crucifixion there, in Sunni Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city, after Mecca and Medina. As a result, despite having an area of only 0, outside the Old City stands the Garden Tomb. Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the issues in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, West Jerusalem was among the captured and later annexed by Israel while East Jerusalem, including the Old City, was captured. Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently annexed it into Jerusalem, one of Israels Basic Laws, the 1980 Jerusalem Law, refers to Jerusalem as the countrys undivided capital. All branches of the Israeli government are located in Jerusalem, including the Knesset, the residences of the Prime Minister and President, the international community does not recognize Jerusalem as Israels capital, and the city hosts no foreign embassies. Jerusalem is also home to some non-governmental Israeli institutions of importance, such as the Hebrew University. In 2011, Jerusalem had a population of 801,000, of which Jews comprised 497,000, Muslims 281,000, a city called Rušalim in the Execration texts of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt is widely, but not universally, identified as Jerusalem. Jerusalem is called Urušalim in the Amarna letters of Abdi-Heba, the name Jerusalem is variously etymologized to mean foundation of the god Shalem, the god Shalem was thus the original tutelary deity of the Bronze Age city. The form Yerushalem or Yerushalayim first appears in the Bible, in the Book of Joshua, according to a Midrash, the name is a combination of Yhwh Yireh and the town Shalem. The earliest extra-biblical Hebrew writing of the word Jerusalem is dated to the sixth or seventh century BCE and was discovered in Khirbet Beit Lei near Beit Guvrin in 1961. The inscription states, I am Yahweh thy God, I will accept the cities of Judah and I will redeem Jerusalem, or as other scholars suggest, the mountains of Judah belong to him, to the God of Jerusalem
5.
President of Israel
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The President of the State of Israel is the head of state of Israel. The position is largely a figurehead role, with executive power effectively being exercised by the prime minister. The current president is Reuven Rivlin, who took office on 24 July 2014, presidents are elected by the Knesset for a seven-year term and are limited to a single term. The president is elected by an majority in the Knesset. If no candidate has received a majority of votes by the first round of voting. When electing the president, Knesset members vote by secret ballot, the president is elected to a term of seven years, and cannot be re-elected. Until 2000, the president was elected for a five-year term, any Israeli citizen who is a resident of the State is eligible to run for president. The office falls vacant upon completion of a term, resignation, presidential tenure is not keyed to that of the Knesset in order to assure continuity in government and the nonpartisan character of the office. There is no vice president in the Israeli governmental system, if the president is temporarily incapacitated or leaves office, the speaker of the Knesset becomes acting president. The first presidential election took place on 16 February 1949, the second took place in 1951, as at the time presidential terms were linked to the length of the Knesset term. Another election took place the year after Weizmanns death. Since then, elections have been held in 1957,1962,1963,1968,1973,1978,1983,1988,1993,1998,2000,2007 and 2014, six elections have taken place with no opposition candidate, although a vote was still held. The Basic Law, The Government also includes sections on the powers of the president with reference to the government, the president signs every law and international or bilateral treaties approved by the Knesset. Presidential powers are usually exercised based on the recommendation of appropriate government ministers, the presidents most important role, in practice, is to help lead the process of forming a government. The president awards the Israel Prize on Yom Haatzmaut and the Wolf Prize, the president also serves as the main speaker at the opening ceremonies of the half-yearly Knesset conference, as well as at the annual official ceremonies for Yom Hazikaron and Yom HaShoah. Most Israeli presidents were involved in politics or Zionist activities before taking office. The first Israeli presidents were born in the former Russian Empire, the first native-born president, as well as the first with a Sephardi background, was Yitzhak Navon. The first president with a Western European background was Chaim Herzog, the first president with a Mizrahi background was Moshe Katsav, who was born in Iran
6.
Prime Minister of Israel
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The Prime Minister of Israel is the head of the Israeli government and the most powerful figure in Israeli politics. Although the President of Israel is the head of state, his powers are largely ceremonial. The official residence of the minister, Beit Rosh Hamemshala is in Jerusalem. The current prime minister is Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud, the person to hold the position. Following an election, the president nominates a member of the Knesset to become prime minister after asking party leaders whom they support for the position, the nominee then presents a government platform and must receive a vote of confidence in order to become prime minister. In practice, the minister is usually the leader of the largest party in the governing coalition. Between 1996 and 2001, the minister was directly elected. The office of prime minister came into existence on 14 May 1948, the date of the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, david Ben-Gurion, leader of Mapai and head of the Jewish Agency became Israels first prime minister. The position became permanent on 8 March 1949, when the first government was formed, Ben-Gurion retained his role until late 1953, when he resigned in order to settle in the Kibbutz of Sde Boker. He was replaced by Moshe Sharett, however, Ben-Gurion returned in a little under two years to reclaim his position. He resigned for a time in 1963, breaking away from Mapai to form Rafi. Levi Eshkol took over as head of Mapai and prime minister and he became the first prime minister to head the country under the banner of two parties when Mapai formed the Alignment with Ahdut HaAvoda in 1965. In 1968 he also became the party leader to command an absolute majority in the Knesset, after Mapam and Rafi merged into the Alignment. On 26 February 1969, Eshkol became the first prime minister to die in office, however, Allons stint lasted less than a month, as the party persuaded Golda Meir to return to political life and become prime minister in March 1969. Meir was Israels first woman minister, and the third in the world. Meir resigned in 1974 after the Agranat Commission published its findings on the Yom Kippur War, Yitzhak Rabin took over, though he also resigned towards the end of the eighth Knessets term following a series of scandals. Rabins wife, Leah, was found to have had an overseas bank account. Menachem Begin became the first right-wing prime minister when his Likud won the 1977 elections and he resigned in 1983 for health reasons, passing the reins of power to Yitzhak Shamir
7.
Knesset
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The Knesset is the unicameral national legislature of Israel. As the legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the President and Prime Minister, approves the cabinet, in addition, the Knesset elects the State Comptroller. The Prime Minister may also dissolve the Knesset, however, until an election is completed, the Knesset maintains authority in its current composition. The Knesset is located in Givat Ram, Jerusalem, as the legislative branch of the Israeli government, the Knesset passes all laws, elects the president, approves the cabinet, and supervises the work of the government through its committees. It also has the power to waive the immunity of its members, remove the President and the State Comptroller from office, the Knesset is presided over by a Speaker and a Deputy Speaker. The Knesset is divided into committees, which amend bills on the appropriate subjects, Committee chairpersons are chosen by their members, on recommendation of the House Committee, and their factional composition represents that of the Knesset itself. Committees may elect sub-committees and delegate powers to them, or establish joint committees for issues concerning more than one committee, to further their deliberations, they invite government ministers, senior officials, and experts in the matter being discussed. There are four types of committees in the Knesset, permanent committees amend proposed legislation dealing with their area of expertise, and may initiate legislation. However, such legislation may only deal with Basic Laws and laws dealing with the Knesset, elections to the Knesset, Knesset members, or the State Comptroller. Special committees function in a manner to permanent committees, but are appointed to deal with particular manners at hand. Parliamentary inquiry committees are appointed by the plenum to deal with issues viewed as having national importance. The Ethics Committee is responsible for jurisdiction over Knesset members who violate the rules of ethics of the Knesset, within the framework of responsibility, the Ethics Committee may place various sanctions on a member, but is not allowed to restrict a members right to vote. The Knesset numbers 120 members, a subject which has often been a cause for proposed reforms and this proposed law has also been favoured by other politicians, including Benjamin Netanyahu. The 120 members of the Knesset are popularly elected from a single electoral district to concurrent four-year terms. All Israeli citizens 18 years or older may vote in legislative elections, Knesset seats are allocated among the various parties using the DHondt method of party list proportional representation. A party or electoral alliance must pass the threshold of 3. 25% of the overall vote to be allocated a Knesset seat. Parties select their candidates using a closed list, thus, voters select the party of their choice, not any specific candidate. The electoral threshold was set at 1% from 1949 to 1992, then 1. 5% from 1992 to 2003
8.
Supreme Court of Israel
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The Supreme Court is the highest court in Israel. It has ultimate jurisdiction over all other courts and, in some cases. The Supreme Court consists of 15 justices who are appointed by the Judicial Selection Committee, once appointed, justices serve until retirement at the age of 70, unless they resign, or are removed from office. The current President of the Supreme Court is Miriam Naor, the Supreme Court is situated in Jerusalems Givat Ram governmental campus. Its jurisdiction applies to all of Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories, according to the principle of binding precedent, a ruling of the Supreme Court is binding upon every other court, except itself. Appointing Supreme Court Justices requires a majority of 7 of the 9 committee members, the three organs of state—the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government—as well as the bar association are represented in the Judges Nominations Committee. Thus, the shaping of the body, through the manner of judicial appointment, is carried out by all the authorities together. An eminent jurist can also be appointed to the Supreme Court, the number of Supreme Court justices is determined by a resolution of the Knesset. Currently, there are 15 Supreme Court Justices, at the head of the Supreme Court and at the head of the judicial system as a whole stands the President of the Supreme Court, and at his or her side, the Deputy President. A judges term ends when he or she reaches 70 years of age, resigns, dies, is appointed to another position that disqualifies him or her, as of December 2016 the Supreme Court Justices are, Liat Benmelech and Guy Shani serve as the Court Registrars. Below is a list of presidents of the Supreme Court, As an appellate court and it also considers appeals on judicial and quasi-judicial decisions of various kinds, such as matters relating to the legality of Knesset elections and disciplinary rulings of the Bar Association. The High Court of Justice grants relief through orders such as injunction, mandamus and Habeas Corpus, the Supreme Court can also sit at a “further hearing” on its own judgment. The Supreme Court, both as a court and the High Court of Justice, is normally constituted of a panel of three Justices. The Supreme Court sits as a panel of five justices or more in a ‘further hearing’ on a matter in which the Supreme Court sat with a panel of three justices. The Supreme Court may sit as a panel of an uneven number of justices than three in matters that involve fundamental legal questions and constitutional issues of particular importance. The length of service, for purpose, is calculated from the date of the appointment of the Judge to the Supreme Court. A special power, unique to the Supreme Court, is the power to order a retrial on a matter in which the defendant has been convicted by a final judgment. In practice, a ruling to hold a retrial is very rarely made, the Court announces its judgments through individually signed opinions setting out the result and underlying reasoning
9.
Education Minister of Israel
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The Israeli Ministry of Education is the branch of government charged with overseeing public education institutions in Israel. The department is headed by the Minister of Education, who is a member of the cabinet, the ministry has previously included culture and sport, although this is now covered by the Ministry of Culture and Sport. In the first decade of statehood, the system was faced with the task of establishing a network of kindergartens. In 1949, there were 80,000 elementary school students, by 1950, there were 120,000 - an increase of nearly 150 percent within the span of one year. Israel also took responsibility for the education of Arab schoolchildren. The first minister of education was Zalman Shazar, later president of the State of Israel, since 2002, the Ministry of Education has awarded a National Education Award to five top localities in recognizing excellence in investing substantial resources in the educational system. In 2012, first place was awarded to the Shomron Regional Council and followed by Or Yehuda, Tiberias, Eilat, the prize has been awarded to a variety of educational institutions including kindergartens and elementary schools. Ministry of Education All Ministers in the Ministry of Education and Culture Knesset website
10.
Ben-Zion Dinor
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Ben-Zion Dinur was a Zionist activist, educator, historian and Israeli politician. Dinaburg was born in 1884 in Khorol in the Russian Empire and he received his education in a Lithuanian yeshivot. He studied under Shimon Shkop in the Telz Yeshiva, and became interested in the Haskalah through Rosh Yeshiva Eliezer Gordons polemics, in 1898 he moved to the Slabodka yeshiva and in 1900 he traveled to Vilnius and was certified a Rabbi. He then went to Lyubavichi to witness the Chabad-Lubavitch branch of Hasidic Judaism, between 1902 and 1911 he was engaged in Zionist activism and teaching, which at some point resulted in a brief arrest. In 1910 he married Bilhah Feingold, a teacher who had worked with him in a trade school in Poltava. In 1911 he left his wife and son for two years to attend the Berlin University, where he studied under Michael Rostovtzeff and Eugen Täubler. He then spent two years at the University of Bern, where he began his dissertation under Rostovzev. The break of World War I forced him to move to the University of Petrograd, however, due to the October Revolution, he did not receive his PhD. He was a lecturer at the University of Odessa from 1920 to 1921, in 1921 he immigrated to Palestine and from 1923 to 1948 served as a teacher and later as head of the Jewish Teachers Training College, Jerusalem. In 1936 he was appointed lecturer in modern Jewish history at the Hebrew University and became professor in 1948 and he believed messianic ferment played a crucial role in Jewish history, and introduced the idea of mered hagalut. From 1953 to 1959 he was president of Yad Vashem, Dinur was twice a recipient of the Israel Prize, which was established at his initiative when he was Minister of Education, in 1958 for Jewish studies, and in 1973 for education. He was a recipient of the Yakir Yerushalayim award in 1967, the year of the awards inauguration
11.
Shmuel Yosef Agnon
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Shmuel Yosef Agnon was a Nobel Prize laureate writer and was one of the central figures of modern Hebrew fiction. In Hebrew, he is known by the acronym Shai Agnon, in English, his works are published under the name S. Y. Agnon was born in Polish Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and later immigrated to Mandatory Palestine and his works deal with the conflict between the traditional Jewish life and language and the modern world. They also attempt to recapture the fading traditions of the European shtetl, in a wider context, he also contributed to broadening the characteristic conception of the narrators role in literature. Agnon shared the Nobel Prize with the poet Nelly Sachs in 1966, shmuel Yosef Halevi Czaczkes was born in Buczacz or Butschatsch, Polish Galicia, now Buchach, Ukraine. Officially, his date of birth on the Hebrew calendar was 18 Av 5648, but he said his birthday was on the Jewish fast day of Tisha BAv. Shalom Mordechai Halevy, was ordained as a rabbi, but worked in the fur trade and he did not attend school and was schooled by his parents. In addition to studying Jewish texts, Agnon studied writings of the Haskalah, at the age of eight, he began to write in Hebrew and Yiddish, At the age of 15, he published his first poem – a Yiddish poem about the Kabbalist Joseph della Reina. He continued to write poems and stories in Hebrew and Yiddish, in 1908, he moved to Jaffa in Ottoman Palestine. The first story he published there was Agunot, which appeared that year in the journal Haomer. He used the pen name Agnon, derived from the title of the story, in 1910, Forsaken Wives was translated into German. In 1912, at the urging of Yosef Haim Brenner, he published a novella, in 1913, Agnon moved to Germany, where he met Esther Marx. They married in 1920 and had two children, in Germany he lived in Berlin and Bad Homburg vor der Höhe. Salman Schocken, a businessman and later publisher, became his literary patron. From 1931 on, his work was published by Schocken Books, in Germany, he continued to write short stories and collaborated with Martin Buber on an anthology of Hasidic stories. Many of his books appeared in Bubers Jüdischer Verlag. The mostly assimilated, secular German Jews, Buber and Franz Rosenzweig among them, considered Agnon to be a relic, being a religious man. Gershom Scholem called him the Jews Jew, in 1924, a fire broke out in his home, destroying his manuscripts and rare book collection
12.
Martin Buber
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Born in Vienna, Buber came from a family of observant Jews, but broke with Jewish custom to pursue secular studies in philosophy. In 1902, he became the editor of the weekly Die Welt, in 1923, Buber wrote his famous essay on existence, Ich und Du, and in 1925, he began translating the Hebrew Bible into the German language. He was nominated for the Nobel prize in literature ten times, Martin Buber was born in Vienna to an Orthodox Jewish family. His grandfather, Solomon Buber, was a scholar of Midrash. At home Buber spoke Yiddish and German, in 1892 Buber returned to his fathers house in Lemberg, todays Lviv, Ukraine. The latter two, in particular, inspired him to studies in philosophy. In 1896, Buber went to study in Vienna, in 1898, he joined the Zionist movement, participating in congresses and organizational work. In 1899 while studying in Zürich, Buber met his wife, Paula Winkler. In 1930, Buber became a professor at the University of Frankfurt am Main. He then founded the Central Office for Jewish Adult Education, which became an important body as the German government forbade Jews to attend public education. In 1938, Buber left Germany and settled in Jerusalem, Mandate Palestine, receiving a professorship at Hebrew University and lecturing in anthropology and introductory sociology. Buber was a descendant of the prominent 16th century rabbi Meir Katzenellenbogen, known as the Maharam of Padua, as was his cousin. Karl Marx is another notable relative, Bubers wife Paula died in 1958, and he died at his home in the Talbiya neighborhood of Jerusalem on June 13,1965. They had two children, a son, Rafael Buber and a daughter, Eva Strauss-Steinitz, Bubers evocative, sometimes poetic, writing style marked the major themes in his work, the retelling of Hasidic and Chinese tales, Biblical commentary, and metaphysical dialogue. A cultural Zionist, Buber was active in the Jewish and educational communities of Germany and he was also a staunch supporter of a binational solution in Palestine, and after the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel, of a regional federation of Israel and Arab states. His influence extends across the humanities, particularly in the fields of psychology, social philosophy. Bubers attitude towards Zionism was tied to his desire to promote a vision of Hebrew humanism, according to Laurence J. Accordingly, the task of Israel as a distinct nation was inexorably linked to the task of humanity in general. Approaching Zionism from his own viewpoint, Buber disagreed with Theodor Herzl about the political and cultural direction of Zionism
13.
Abba Eban
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Abba Eban was an Israeli diplomat and politician, and a scholar of the Arabic and Hebrew languages. In his career, he was Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister, Education Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and he was also Vice President of the United Nations General Assembly and President of the Weizmann Institute of Science. Born in Cape Town, South Africa, on 2 February 1915 to Lithuanian Jewish parents, as a child, he recalled being sent to his grandfathers house every weekend to study the Hebrew language, Talmud, and Biblical literature. He lived for a period of time in Belfast and he was educated at St Olaves Grammar School, then in Southwark, before studying Classics and Oriental languages at Queens College, Cambridge, where he achieved a triple first. During his time at University and afterwards, Eban was highly involved in the Federation of Zionist Youth and was editor of its ideological journal, after graduating with high honours, he researched Arabic and Hebrew as a Fellow of Pembroke College from 1938–39. At the outbreak of World War II, he went to work for Chaim Weizmann at the World Zionist Organization in London from December 1939. In 1947, he translated from the original Arabic, Maze of Justice, Diary of a Country Prosecutor, at this stage, he changed his name to the Hebrew word Abba, meaning Father, as he could foresee himself as the father of the nation of Israel. Eban continued at the United Nations over the next decade, from 1950 to 1959 he also served as his countrys ambassador to the United States. He was renowned for his oratorical skills, in the words of Henry Kissinger, I have never encountered anyone who matched his command of the English language. Sentences poured forth in mellifluous constructions complicated enough to test the listener’s intelligence and his grasp of history and fluency in ten languages enhanced his speech-making in the United Nations, even to skeptical or hostile audiences. In 1952, Eban was elected Vice President of the UN General Assembly, Eban left the United States in 1959 and returned to Israel, where he was elected to the Knesset as a member of Mapai. He served under David Ben-Gurion as Minister of Education and Culture from 1960 to 1963, through this period, he also served as president of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot. From 1966 to 1974, Eban served as Israels foreign minister, nonetheless, he was a strong supporter of trading parts of the territories occupied in the war in exchange for peace. He played an important part in the shaping of UN Security Council Resolution 242 in 1967, among his other high level contacts, Eban was received by Pope Paul VI in 1969. Eban was at times criticized for not voicing his opinions in Israels internal debate, however, he was generally known to be on the dovish side of Israeli politics and was increasingly outspoken after leaving the cabinet. In 1977 and 1981, it was understood that Shimon Peres intended to name Eban Foreign Minister, had the Labor Party won those elections. His comment that Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, in 1988, after three decades in the Knesset, he lost his seat over internal splits in the Labour Party. He devoted the rest of his life to writing and teaching, including serving as an academic at Princeton University, Columbia University
14.
A. B. Yehoshua
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Yehoshua is an Israeli novelist, essayist, and playwright, published as A. B. The New York Times called him the Israeli Faulkner, Avraham Yehoshua was born to a fifth-generation Jerusalem family of Sephardi origin. His father, Yaakov Yehoshua, was a scholar and author specializing in the history of Jerusalem and his mother, Malka Rosilio, immigrated from Morocco in 1932. He grew up in Jerusalems Kerem Avraham neighborhood, Yehoshua served as a paratrooper in the Israeli army from 1954 to 1957. After studying literature and philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and he lived in Jerusalems Neve Shaanan neighborhood. From 1963 to 1967, Yehoshua lived and taught in Paris, since 1972, he has taught Comparative and Hebrew Literature at the University of Haifa, where he holds the rank of Full Professor. In 1975 he was a writer-in-residence at St Cross College, Oxford and he has also been a visiting professor at Harvard, the University of Chicago and Princeton. Yehoshua is married to Rivka, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst and they have a daughter and two sons, and six grandchildren. From the end of his service, Yehoshua began to publish fiction. His first book of stories, Mot Hazaken was published in 1962 and he became a prominent figure in the new wave generation of Israeli writers who differed from earlier writers in their focus on the individual and interpersonal rather than the group. Yehoshua names Franz Kafka, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, and William Faulkner as formative influences, harold Bloom wrote an article about Yehoshuas A Late Divorce in the New York Times, and also mentions it in his The Western Canon. Yehoshua is the author of novels, three books of short stories, four plays, and four collections of essays, including Ahizat Moledet. It was adapted for television as a five-part multilingual series by director Ram Loevy, as do many of his works, his eighth novel, Friendly Fire, explores the nature of dysfunctional family relationships in a drama that here moves back and forth between Israel and Tanzania. His works have published in translation in 28 countries, and many have been adapted for film, television, theatre. Yehoshua is an Israeli Peace Movement activist and he attended the signing of the Geneva Accord and freely airs his political views in essays and interviews. He is a critic of Israeli occupation but also of the Palestinians. He and other intellectuals mobilized on behalf of the dovish New Movement before 2009 elections in Israel, according to La Stampa, before the 2008–2009 Israel-Gaza conflict he published an appeal to Gaza residents urging them to end the violence. He explained why the Israeli operation was necessary and why it needed to end, Precisely because the Gazans are our neighbors and we need to try to reach a cease-fire as quickly as possible
15.
Robert Aumann
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Robert John Aumann is an Israeli-American mathematician and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He is a professor at the Center for the Study of Rationality in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel and he also holds a visiting position at Stony Brook University and is one of the founding members of the Stony Brook Center for Game Theory. Aumann received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 2005 for his work on conflict and he shared the prize with Thomas Schelling. Aumann was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and fled to the United States with his family in 1938 and he attended the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School, a yeshiva high school in New York City. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1950 with a B. Sc. in Mathematics and he received his M. Sc. in 1952, and his Ph. D. in Mathematics in 1955, both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His doctoral dissertation, Asphericity of Alternating Linkages, concerned knot theory and his advisor was George Whitehead, Jr. In 1956 he joined the Mathematics faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has been a professor at Stony Brook University since 1989. Aumanns greatest contribution was in the realm of repeated games, which are situations in which players encounter the same situation over and over again. Aumann was the first to define the concept of correlated equilibrium in game theory, furthermore, Aumann has introduced the first purely formal account of the notion of common knowledge in game theory. He collaborated with Lloyd Shapley on the Aumann-Shapley value and he is also known for his agreement theorem, in which he argues that under his given conditions, two Bayesian rationalists with common prior beliefs cannot agree to disagree. Aumann and Maschler used game theory to analyze Talmudic dilemmas, the article in that matter was dedicated to a son of Aumann, Shlomo, who was killed during the 1982 Lebanon War while serving as a tank gunner in the Israel Defense Forcess armored corps. Aumann is a member in the Professors for a Strong Israel, Aumann opposed the disengagement from Gaza in 2005 claiming it is a crime against Gush Katif settlers and a serious threat to the security of Israel. Aumann draws on a case in game called the Blackmailer Paradox to argue that giving land to the Arabs is strategically foolish based on the mathematical theory. By presenting an unyielding demand, the Arab states force Israel to yield to blackmail due to the perception that it leave the negotiating room with nothing if it is inflexible. As a result of his views, and his use of his research to justify them. A petition to cancel his prize garnered signatures from 1,000 academics worldwide, in a speech to a religious Zionist youth movement, Bnei Akiva, Aumann claimed that Israel is in deep trouble. He revealed his belief that the anti-Zionist Satmar Jews might have been right in their condemnation of the original Zionist movement. “I fear the Satmars were right. ”He said, and quoted a verse from Psalm 127, “Unless the Lord builds a house, its builders toil on it in vain. ”Aumann feels that the historical Zionist establishment failed to transmit its message to its successors, because it was secular
16.
Golda Meir
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Golda Meir was an Israeli teacher, kibbutznik, stateswoman and politician and the fourth elected Prime Minister of Israel. Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel on March 17,1969, after serving as Minister of Labour and Foreign Minister. Former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion used to call Meir the best man in the government, she was portrayed as the strong-willed, straight-talking. Meir resigned as minister in 1974, the year following the Yom Kippur War. She died in 1978 of lymphoma, Golda Mabovitch was born on May 3,1898, in Kiev, Russian Empire, present-day Ukraine, to Blume Neiditch and Moshe Mabovitch, a carpenter. Meir wrote in her autobiography that her earliest memories were of her father boarding up the front door in response to rumours of an imminent pogrom and she had two sisters, Sheyna and Tzipke, as well as five other siblings who died in childhood. She was especially close to Sheyna, Moshe Mabovitch left to find work in New York City in 1903. In his absence, the rest of the moved to Pinsk to join her mothers family. In 1905, Moshe moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in search of higher-paying work, the following year, he had saved up enough money to bring his family to the United States. Blume ran a store on Milwaukees north side, where by age eight Golda had been put in charge of watching the store when her mother went to the market for supplies. Golda attended the Fourth Street Grade School from 1906 to 1912, a leader early on, she organised a fund raiser to pay for her classmates textbooks. After forming the American Young Sisters Society, she rented a hall and she went on to graduate as valedictorian of her class. At 14, she studied at North Division High School and worked part-time and her mother wanted her to leave school and marry, but she demurred. She bought a ticket to Denver, Colorado, and went to live with her married sister. The Korngolds held intellectual evenings at their home, where Meir was exposed to debates on Zionism, literature, womens suffrage, trade unionism, in her autobiography, she wrote, To the extent that my own future convictions were shaped and given form. Those talk-filled nights in Denver played a considerable role, in Denver, she also met Morris Meyerson, a sign painter, whom she later married on December 24,1917. In 1913 she returned to North Division High, graduating in 1915, while there, she became an active member of Young Poale Zion, which later became Habonim, the Labor Zionist youth movement. She spoke at meetings, embraced Socialist Zionism and hosted visitors from Palestine
17.
Amos Oz
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Amos Oz is an Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba and he is regarded as Israels most famous living author. Ozs work has been published in 42 languages, including Arabic and he has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love, since 1967, Oz has been a prominent advocate of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Amos Klausner was born in 1939 in Jerusalem, where he grew up at No.18 Amos Street in the Kerem Avraham neighborhood and his parents, Fania and Yehuda Arieh Klausner, were immigrants to Mandatory Palestine, who met while studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His fathers family was from Lithuania, where they had been farmers, raising cattle and his father studied history and literature in Vilnius, Lithuania and hoped to become a professor of comparative literature but never gained headway in the academic world. He worked most of his life as a librarian at the Jewish National and she was a highly sensitive and cultured daughter of a wealthy mill owner and attended Charles University in Prague where she studied history and philosophy. She had to abandon her studies when her fathers business collapsed in the Great Depression, Ozs parents were multilingual but neither was comfortable speaking in Hebrew. They spoke with other in Polish, but the only language they allowed Oz to learn was Hebrew. Many of Ozs family members were right-wing Revisionist Zionists and his great uncle Joseph Klausner was the Herut party candidate for the presidency against Chaim Weizmann and was chair of the Hebrew literature department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Oz and his family were not religious, considering it irrational, Oz, however, attended the community religious school Tachkemoni since the only alternative was a socialist school affiliated with the labour movement, to which his family was even more opposed. The noted poet Zelda was one of his teachers, after Tachkemoni he attended Gymnasia Rehavia. His mother, who suffered from depression, committed suicide when he was 12 and he would later explore the repercussions of this event in his memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness. Two years after the suicide of his mother, at the age of 14, he became a Labor Zionist, left home, there he was adopted by the Huldai family and changed his last name to Oz, Hebrew for courage. Asked why he did not leave Jerusalem for Tel Aviv, he later said, by his own account he was a disaster as a laborer. When Oz first began to write, the kibbutz allotted him one day per week for this work, when his book My Michael turned out to be a best-seller Oz quipped that he had become a branch of the economy and the kibbutz allotted him three days. By the 1980s he was four days for writing, two for teaching, while continuing to take his turn as a waiter in the kibbutz dining hall on Saturdays. ”Oz did his Israel Defense Forces service in the Nahal brigade. After concluding his service he was sent by his kibbutz to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem
18.
Ephraim Kishon
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Ephraim Kishon was an Israeli author, dramatist, screenwriter, and Oscar-nominated film director. He was one of the most widely read contemporary satirists in the world, Ephraim Kishon was born on August 23,1924 by the name of Ferenc Hoffmann into a middle-class Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary. In his youth he knew neither Hebrew nor Yiddish and his father worked as a bank manager and his mother was a former secretary. Kishon also had a sister who was a writer and his writing talent became evident in his youth. In 1940 he won his first prize for writing a novel for high school students, due to the racial laws applied in Hungary during World War II, he was not allowed to continue his studies at the university and therefore he began to study jewelry making in 1942. During World War II the Nazis imprisoned him in several concentration camps, at one camp his chess talent helped him survive, as the camp commandant was looking for an opponent. In another camp, the Germans lined up the inmates and shot every tenth person and he later wrote in his book The Scapegoat, They made a mistake—they left one satirist alive. After the war when he returned to Budapest he discovered that his parents and sister had survived, in 1945, he changed his surname from Hoffmann to Kishont to disguise his German origins, and returned to Hungary, where he continued to study art and writing. In 1948 he completed his studies in metal sculpturing and art history, in 1949 he immigrated to the newly founded state of Israel, together with his first wife Eva Klamer, to escape the Communist regime. When arriving in Israel an immigration officer officially Hebraicized his name to Ephraim Kishon and his first marriage to Eva Klamer in 1946 ended in divorce. In 1959, he married Sara, who died in 2002, in 2003, he married the Austrian writer Lisa Witasek. Kishon had three children, Raphael, Amir, and Renana, in 1981, Kishon established a second home in the rural Swiss canton of Appenzell after feeling unappreciated in Israel, but remained a staunch Zionist. Kishon died on January 29,2005 at his home in Switzerland at the age of 80 following a cardiac arrest and his body was flown to Israel and he was buried at the Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv. Being a popular Israeli writer, he felt he was getting negative treatment from the Israeli media due to the fact he was rather Right wing in politics. During this period he wrote several humorous lists for the Hungarian newspaper Új Kelet, afterwards Kishon moved to a housing project. He studied Hebrew at the Ulpan Etzion in Jerusalem, and soon became proficient in the language, nevertheless, his heavy Hungarian accent accompanied him throughout his life. Mastering the Hebrew language with remarkable speed, in 1951 Kishon began writing a column in the easy-Hebrew daily. Later on Kishon began writing for the newspaper Davar in which he published a satire called The Blaumilch Canal and that same year he published his first book in Israel Ha-ole Ha-Yored le-Chayenu- The Pestering Immigrant, which was written in Hungarian and translated into Hebrew by Avigdor Meiri
19.
Naomi Shemer
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Naomi Shemer was a leading Israeli musician and songwriter, hailed as the first lady of Israeli song and poetry. Her song Yerushlayim Shel Zahav written in 1967, became a second anthem after Israel won the Six-Day War that year. Naomi Sapir was born to Rivka Sapir and Meir Sapir in Kvutzat Kinneret, Shemer did her own songwriting and composing, set famous poems to music, such as those of the Israeli poet, Rachel, and the American Walt Whitman. She also translated and adapted popular songs into Hebrew, such as the Beatles song Let It Be in 1973, in 1963, she composed Hurshat HaEucalyptus, a song that evokes Kvutzat Kinneret where she was born. It was covered in a recent version by Ishtar, in 1967, she wrote the patriotic song, Yerushalayim Shel Zahav, which was sung by Shuly Nathan and became famous. She wrote it for the Israeli Music Festival, after Israels victory in the Six-Day War that year, she added another verse celebrating the reunification of Jerusalem. The song gained the status of a second national anthem. Yerushalayim Shel Zahav and other songs have come over time to be associated increasingly with right-wing politics and she first married actor Gideon Shemer and had a daughter, Lali. She later married an attorney, Mordechai Horowitz, with whom she had a son, Shemer continued to write her own songs. She died in 2004 of cancer, aged 73, shortly before her death, she wrote to a friend, saying she had used a Basque folk melody as the basis for her 1967 anthem, Jerusalem of Gold. She had always denied it before, the friend and her family decided to publish the account. In 1962, singer Paco Ibanez performed the Basque melody, Pello Joxepe, in Israel, in 1983, Shemer received the Israel Prize for Hebrew song
20.
Teddy Kollek
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Theodor Teddy Kollek was an Israeli politician who served as the mayor of Jerusalem from 1965 to 1993, and founder of the Jerusalem Foundation. Kollek was re-elected five times, in 1969,1973,1978,1983 and 1989, after reluctantly running for a seventh term in 1993 at the age of 82, he lost to Likud candidate and future Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert. During his tenure, Jerusalem developed into a city, especially after its reunification in 1967. He was once called the greatest builder of Jerusalem since Herod, theodore Kollek was born in Nagyvázsony,120 km from Budapest, Hungary as Kollek Tivadar. His parents named him after Theodor Herzl, the family moved to Vienna in 1918. Growing up in the Austrian capital city, Kollek came to share his father Alfréds Zionist convictions, in 1935, three years before the Nazis seized power in Austria, the Kollek family immigrated to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine. In 1937, he was one of the founders of Kibbutz Ein Gev and that same year he married Tamar Schwarz. They had two children, a son, the film director Amos Kollek, and a daughter, Osnat and he succeeded Reuven Zaslani and preceded Zeev Sherf in this function, and was carrying out the Jewish Agencys policy of assisting the British in fighting these groups. In 1942 Kolleck was appointed the Jewish Agencys deputy head of intelligence, between January 1945 and May 1946 he was the Agencys chief external liaison officer in Jerusalem and was in contact with MI5s main representative as well as members of British Military Intelligence. On 10 August 1945 he revealed to MI5 the location of a secret Irgun training camp near Binyamina, twenty-seven Irgun members were arrested in the raid that followed. During World War II, Kollek tried to represent Jewish interests in Europe on behalf of the Jewish Agency, in 1947–48, he represented the Haganah in Washington, where he assisted in acquiring ammunition for Israel’s then-fledgling army. Kollek became an ally of David Ben-Gurion, serving in the latter’s governments from 1952 as the director general of the prime minister’s office. In 1965 Teddy Kollek succeeded Mordechai Ish-Shalom as Mayor of Jerusalem, on his motivations for seeking the mayor’s office in Jerusalem, Kollek once recalled, I got into this by accident I was bored. When the city was united, I saw this as an historic occasion, to take care of it and show better care than anyone else ever has is a full life purpose. I think Jerusalem is the one element in Jewish history. A body can live without an arm or a leg, not without the heart and this is the heart and soul of it. During his tenure Jerusalem developed into a city, especially after its reunification in 1967 He was often called “the greatest builder of Jerusalem since Herod. ”Kollek was re-elected five times, in 1969,1973,1978,1983. In a reluctant seventh bid for mayor in 1993, Kollek, aged 82, in the Six-Day War of 1967, East Jerusalem, which had been under Jordanian control since 1948, was taken over by Israel
21.
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
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The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, formerly Palestine Orchestra, is the leading symphony orchestra in Israel. The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra was founded as the Palestine Orchestra by violinist Bronisław Huberman in 1936 and its inaugural concert took place in Tel Aviv on December 26,1936, and was conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Its first principal conductor was William Steinberg and its general manager between 1938 and 1945 was Leo Kestenberg, like many of its members, he was a German Jew forced out by the Nazi rise to power and persecution of Jews. During the Second World War the orchestra performed 140 times before Allied soldiers, at the end of the war it performed in recently liberated Belgium. In 1948, after the creation of the State of Israel, in 1958, the IPO was awarded the Israel Prize, in music, being the first year in which the Prize was awarded to an organization. Bernstein maintained close ties with the orchestra from 1947, and in 1988, the IPO bestowed on him the title of Laureate Conductor, Mehta has served as the IPOs Music Advisor since 1968. The IPO did not have a music director, but instead music advisors, until 1977. In 1981, his title was elevated to Music Director for Life, kurt Masur is the IPOs Honorary Guest Conductor, a title granted to him in 1992. Gianandrea Noseda is Principal Guest Conductor, a role previously occupied by Yoel Levi, with Mehta, the IPO has made a number of recordings for Decca. Under the baton of Bernstein, the IPO also recorded his works, the IPO has also collaborated with Japanese composer Yoko Kanno in the soundtrack of the anime Macross Plus. As of 2006, the composers works have been most frequently performed by the IPO were Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, Mendelssohn. The initial concerts of the Palestine Orchestra in December 1936, conducted by Toscanini, the Secretary-General of the orchestra is Avi Shoshani. The IPO has a subscriber base numbering 26,000, commentators have noted the musically conservative tastes of the subscriber base, although the IPO is dedicated to performing new works by Israeli composers, such as Avner Dorman. Zubin Mehta Jean Martinon Bernardino Molinari Paul Paray Leonard Bernstein William Steinberg The orchestras performance in London on September 1,2011 was disrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters, the concert was part of the BBC Proms. The radio broadcast was interrupted, but the concert was broadcast again a few days later, the orchestras secretary-general Avi Shoshani declared to Londons The Times newspaper that the orchestra was unlikely to ever perform in the UK again. Nobody was prosecuted for the disruptions, partly because the management of the Royal Albert Hall, american Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is a non-profit organization dedicated to sustaining the financial future of the Israel Philharmonic. AFIPO seeks to broaden the reach of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the monies raised by AFIPO are directed towards a fund which assists with the operational support of the orchestra and its musical education programs throughout Israel
22.
Jewish Agency for Israel
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The Jewish Agency for Israel is the largest Jewish nonprofit organization in the world. Its mission is to inspire Jews throughout the world to connect with their people, heritage, and land, and empower them to build a thriving Jewish future and a strong Israel. It is best known as the organization responsible for the immigration and absorption of Jews. Since 1948, the Jewish Agency for Israel has been responsible for bringing 3 million immigrants to Israel, the Jewish Agency played a central role in the founding and the building of the State of Israel. David Ben Gurion was the Chairman of its Executive Committee from 1935 and he became Israels first Prime Minister. In the years before and after the creation of the State and it serves as the main link between Israel and Jewish communities around the world. For example, it conducts intensive Hebrew-language immersion programs in Israel, by law, the Jewish Agency is a para-statal organization but it does not receive core funding from the Israeli government. The Jewish Agency is funded by The Jewish Federations of North America, Keren Hayesod, major Jewish communities and federations, the dozens of programs it supports or operates benefit well over a million Israelis and Jews worldwide every year. In 2008, The Jewish Agency won the Israel Prize for its contribution to Israel. As of 2016, The Jewish Agency sponsors dozens of programs that connect Jews to Israel, the Agency organizes the programs into four different categories, Israel Experiences, Israel in Your Community, Jewish Social Action, and Aliyah. Some programs, According to its website, the Israel Experience programs bring young Jews from around the globe to Israel to get to know the country, Taglit-Birthright Israel provides ten-day educational trips to Israel for Jews ages 18 to 26 from around the world, completely free of charge. Onward Israel organizes 6-to-10-week professional internships in Israel for students and young professionals who have previously visited Israel on Taglit-Birthright or another group tour, participants come in groups, all from the same community or organization. Masa Israel Journey is an organization founded in 2004 by the Government of Israels Office of the Prime Minister, together with The Jewish Agency. It includes a portfolio of more than 200 programs in Israel for Jews aged 18–30, including programs, service programs. It sponsors over 10,000 participants per year, masa provides significant scholarships to participants, performs outreach, and operates alumni activities. Israel Tech Challenge is a partnership of The Jewish Agency with the National Cyber Bureau and it offers trips to Israel of varying lengths for students and young professionals with knowledge in the field of computer science and programming. The programs offer visits with Israeli hi-tech professionals and academics, along with experience or training in coding and it was founded in 1946 by the World Zionist Organization. As of 2013, it had 12,000 alumni from South America, the United States, South Africa, Australia, North Africa, naale allows Jewish teenagers from the diaspora to study in Israel and earn a high school diploma
23.
Yad Vashem
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Yad Vashem is Israels official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Established in 1953, Yad Vashem is on the slope of Mount Herzl on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem,804 meters above sea level. Those recognized by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations are honored in a section of Yad Vashem known as the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations, after the Western Wall, Yad Vashem is the second-most-visited Israeli tourist site. Its curators charge no fee for admission and welcome approximately one million visitors a year, naming the Holocaust memorial yad vashem conveys the idea of establishing a national depository for the names of Jewish victims who have no one to carry their name after death. The original verse referred to eunuchs who, although they could not have children, Yad Vashem was first proposed in September 1942, at a board meeting of the Jewish National Fund, by Mordecai Shenhavi, a member of Kibbutz Mishmar Haemek. In August 1945, the plan was discussed in detail at a Zionist meeting in London. A provisional board of Zionist leaders were established that included David Remez as chairman, Shlomo Zalman Shragai, Baruch Zuckerman, in February 1946, Yad Vashem opened an office in Jerusalem and a branch office in Tel Aviv and in June that year, convened its first plenary session. In July 1947, the First Conference on Holocaust Research was held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, however, the outbreak in May 1948 of the War of Independence, brought operations to a standstill for two years. In 1953, the Knesset, Israels Parliament, unanimously passed the Yad Vashem Law, establishing the Martyrs, the new Yad Vashem museum was designed by Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie, replacing the previous 30-year-old exhibition. It is the culmination of a $100 million decade-long expansion project, in November 2008, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau was appointed Chairman of Yad Vashems Council to replace Tommy Lapid. The Vice Chairmen of the Council are Yitzhak Arad and Moshe Kantor, elie Wiesel was vice chairman of the Council until his death on July 2,2016. The Chairman of the Directorate is Avner Shalev, who has replaced Yitzhak Arad, the Director General is Dorit Novak. The Head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research and Incumbent is John Najmann, the Chair for Holocaust Studies is Prof. Dan Michman. The Chief Historian is Prof. Dina Porat, the Academic Advisor is Prof. Yehuda Bauer. The Members of the Yad Vashem Directorate are Yossi Ahimeir, Daniel Atar, Michal Cohen, Matityahu Drobles, Abraham Duvdevani, Prof. Boleslaw Goldman, Vera H. Golovensky, Moshe Ha-Elion, Adv. Shlomit Kasirer, Yossi Katribas, Yehiel Leket, Baruch Shub, Dalit Stauber, Dr. Zehava Tanne, the aims of Yad Vashem are education, research and documentation and commemoration. Yad Vashem seeks to preserve the memory and names of the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, Yad Vashem also honors non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Yad Vashem trains 10,000 domestic and foreign teachers every year, the organization operates a web site in several languages, including German, Hebrew, Farsi and Arabic
24.
Jewish National Fund
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The Jewish National Fund was founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Palestine for Jewish settlement. The JNF is a non-profit organization, by 2007, it owned 13% of the total land in Israel. Since its inception, the JNF says it has planted over 240 million trees in Israel and it has also built 180 dams and reservoirs, developed 250,000 acres of land and established more than 1,000 parks. In 2002, the JNF was awarded the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement and special contribution to society, the JNF was founded at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel in 1901 with Theodor Herzls support based on the proposal of a German Jewish mathematician, Zvi Hermann Schapira. Early land purchases were completed in Judea and the Lower Galilee, in 1909, the JNF played a central role in the founding of Tel Aviv. The establishment of the “Olive Tree Fund” marked the beginning of Diaspora support of afforestation efforts, the Blue Box has been part of the JNF since its inception, symbolizing the partnership between Israel and the Diaspora. In the period between the two wars, about one million of these blue and white tin collection boxes could be found in Jewish homes throughout the world. From 1902 until the late 1940s, the JNF sold JNF stamps to raise money, for a brief period in May 1948, JNF stamps were used as postage stamps during the transition from Palestine to Israel. The first parcel of land,200 dunams east of Hadera, was received as a gift from the Russian Zionist leader Isaac Leib Goldberg of Vilnius, in 1904 and 1905, the JNF purchased land plots near the Sea of Galilee and at Ben Shemen. In 1921, JNF land holdings reached 25,000 acres, at the end of 1935, JNF held 89,500 acres of land housing 108 Jewish communities. In 1939, 10% of the Jewish population of the British Mandate of Palestine lived on JNF land, JNF holdings by the end of the British Mandate period amounted to 936 km². By 1948, the JNF owned 54% of the held by Jews in the region. By the eve of statehood, the JNF had acquired a total of 936,000 dunums of land, most of the JNFs activities during the Mandatory period were closely associated with Yossef Weitz, the head of its settlement department. From the beginning, JNFs policy was to lease land long-term rather than sell it, after Israels establishment in 1948, the government began to sell absentee lands to the JNF. On January 27,1949,1,000 km² of land was sold to the JNF for the price of I£11 million, another 1,000 km² of land was sold to the JNF in October 1950. Over the years questions about the legitimacy of these transactions have been raised, in 1953, the JNF was dissolved and re-organized as an Israeli company under the name Keren Kayemet LeYisrael. In 1960, administration of the held by the JNF-KKL, apart from forested areas, was transferred to a newly formed government agency. The ILA was then responsible for managing some 93% of the land of Israel, all the land managed by the ILA was defined as Israeli lands, it included both land owned by the government and land owned by the JNF-KKL
25.
Zubin Mehta
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Zubin Mehta is an Indian conductor of Western classical music. He is the Music Director for Life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Mehta is also the chief conductor of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino festival. Mehta was born into a Parsi family in Bombay, India, while in school, Mehta was taught to play the piano by Joseph de Lima, who was his first piano teacher. Mehta initially intended to study medicine, but eventually became a student in Vienna at the age of 18. Also at the academy along with Mehta were conductor Claudio Abbado. Mehtas first marriage was to Canadian soprano Carmen Lasky in 1958 and they have a son, Mervon, and a daughter, Zarina. Two years after the divorce, Carmen married Mehtas brother, Zarin Mehta, in July 1969, Mehta married Nancy Kovack, an American former film and television actress. Mehta, a permanent resident of the United States, retains his Indian citizenship, in 1958, Mehta made his conducting debut in Vienna. The same year he won the International Conducting Competition in Liverpool and was appointed assistant conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Mehta soon rose to the rank of chief conductor when he was made Music Director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra in 1960, a post he held until 1967. In 1978 Mehta became the Music Director and Principal Conductor of the New York Philharmonic and remained there until his resignation in 1991, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra appointed Mehta its Music Advisor in 1969, Music Director in 1977, and made him its Music Director for Life in 1981. Since 1985, Mehta has been conductor of the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence. Additionally, from 1998 until 2006, Mehta was Music Director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Munich Philharmonic named him its Honorary Conductor. Since 2005, Mehta has been the conductor of the Palau de les Arts. Mehta conducted the Vienna New Years Concert in 1990,1995,1998,2007 and 2015 and he has also made a recording of Indian instrumentalist Ravi Shankars Sitar Concerto No. 2, with Shankar and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, in between those appearances he conducted the historic 1992 production of Tosca in which each act took place in the actual setting and at the actual time specified in the score. This production starred Catherine Malfitano in the role, Plácido Domingo as Cavaradossi. On 29 August 1999, he conducted Mahler Symphony No,2, at the vicinity of Buchenwald concentration camp in the German city of Weimar, with both the Bavarian State Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, sitting alongside each other. The making of this production was chronicled in a documentary called The Turandot Project which Mehta narrated, on 26 December 2005, the first anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami, Mehta and the Bavarian State Orchestra performed for the first time in Chennai at the Madras Music Academy
26.
Yitzhak Rabin
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Yitzhak Rabin was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995, Rabin was born in Jerusalem to Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants and was raised in a Labor Zionist household. He learned agriculture in school and excelled as a student and he led a 27-year career as a soldier. As a teenager he joined the Palmach, the force of the Yishuv. He eventually rose through its ranks to become its chief of operations during Israels War of Independence and he joined the newly formed Israel Defense Forces in late 1948 and continued to rise as a promising officer. He helped shape the training doctrine of the IDF in the early 1950s and he was appointed Chief of the General Staff in 1964 and oversaw Israels victory in the 1967 Six-Day War. Rabin served as Israels ambassador to the United States from 1968 to 1973 and he was appointed Prime Minister of Israel in 1974, after the resignation of Golda Meir. In his first term, Rabin signed the Sinai Interim Agreement and he resigned in 1977 in the wake of a financial scandal. Rabin was Israels minister of defense for much of the 1980s, in 1992, Rabin was re-elected as prime minister on a platform embracing the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. He signed several agreements with the Palestinian leadership as part of the Oslo Accords. In 1994, Rabin won the Nobel Peace Prize together with long-time political rival Shimon Peres, Rabin also signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994. In November 1995, he was assassinated by an extremist named Yigal Amir, Rabin was the first native-born prime minister of Israel, the only prime minister to be assassinated and the second to die in office after Levi Eshkol. Rabin has become a symbol of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process, Nehemiah Rubitzov was born in the shtetl Sydorovychi near Ivankiv in the southern Pale of Settlement. His father Menachem died when he was a boy, and Nehemiah worked to support his family from an early age, at the age of 18, he emigrated to the United States, where he joined the Poale Zion party and changed his surname to Rabin. In 1917, Nehemiah went to Mandatory Palestine with a group of volunteers from the Jewish Legion, yitzhaks mother, Rosa Cohen, was born in 1890 in Mogilev in Belarus. Her father, a rabbi, opposed the Zionist movement and sent Rosa to a Christian high school for girls in Gomel, early on, Rosa took an interest in political and social causes. In 1919, she traveled to the region on the steamship Ruslan, after working on a kibbutz on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, she moved to Jerusalem. Rabins parents met in Jerusalem during the 1920 Nebi Musa riots and they moved to Tel Avivs Chlenov Street near Jaffa in 1923
27.
Yeshayahu Leibowitz
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Yeshayahu Leibowitz was born in Riga, Russian Empire in 1903, to a religious and Zionist family. His father was a trader, and his cousin was future chess grandmaster Aron Nimzowitsch. In 1919, he studied chemistry and philosophy at the University of Berlin, after completing his doctorate in 1924, he went on to study biochemistry and medicine, receiving an MD in 1934 from the University of Basel. He migrated to Israel in 1935 and settled in Jerusalem, Leibowitz was married to Greta, with whom he had six children. His son, Elia, was chairman of the Tel Aviv University astrophysics department, another son, Uri, was a professor of medicine at Hadassah University Medical Center. His daughter, Yiska, is a district prosecutor and his sister, Nechama Leibowitz, was a world-famous biblical scholar. Leibowitz was active until his last day and he died in his sleep on 18 August 1994. Leibowitz joined the faculty of mathematics and natural science of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1936 and he became a professor of biochemistry in 1941 and was promoted to the position of senior professor of organic chemistry and neurology in 1952. He taught at the Hebrew University for nearly six decades, lecturing in biochemistry, neurophysiology, philosophy, Leibowitz was an Orthodox Jew who held controversial views on the subject of halakha, or Jewish law. He wrote that the purpose of religious commandments was to obey God. The essence of Leibowitzs religious outlook is that a faith is his commitment to obey God, meaning Gods commandments. This must be so because Leibowitz thought that God cannot be described, that Gods understanding is not mans understanding, Leibowitz claimed that a person’s decision to believe in God defines or describes that person, not God. When someone told Leibowitz that he stopped believing in God after the Holocaust, Leibowitz answered, if a person stops believing after an awful event, it shows that he only obeyed God because he thought he understood God’s plan, or because he expected to see a reward. But “for Leibowitz, religious belief is not an explanation of life, nature or history, or a promise of a future in this world or another and he believed that mixing the two corrupted faith. He condemned the veneration of Jewish shrines, cynically referring to the Western Wall as the Discotel, in contrast to his strict views on some religious matters, he was surprisingly liberal in others. On the subject of homosexuality, for example, Leibowitz believed that despite the ban on homosexual relations in Judaism, Leibowitz served as the editor of the Encyclopaedia Hebraica in its early stages. Apart from his articles and essays, Leibowitz authored a wide range of books on philosophy, human values, Jewish thought, the teachings of Maimonides. Many of his lectures and discourses, including those given as part of the Broadcast University project run by Israeli Army Radio, were compiled and printed in book form
28.
Limor Livnat
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Limor Livnat is an Israeli politician. She served as a member of the Knesset for Likud between 1992 and 2015, and was Minister of Communications, Minister of Education and Minister of Culture & Sport, born in Haifa, Livnat studied at Tel Aviv University. She joined Likud in the 1970s, becoming head of its organisation in 1977. She first entered the Knesset on 14 April 1992, shortly before the 1992 elections and she retained her seat in the 1996 elections, and was appointed Minister of Communications in Binyamin Netanyahus government. Tensions between Livnat and Netanyahu climaxed in the resignation from government in 1997 and subsequent attempt to end Netanyahus leadership of the Likud. After Sharons victory over Ehud Barak in the election for Prime Minister in 2001. She was re-elected in 2003, and continued to serve as Minister of Education until Likud left the coalition in 2006 and she retained her seat in the 2006 and 2009 elections, after which she was appointed to the new post of Minister of Culture and Sport. Prior to the 2013 elections she lost her place as the woman in Likud, finishing below Tzipi Hotovely. However, she was re-elected and continued in the ministerial role, in December 2014 Livnat announced that she was leaving politics, and would not run in the March 2015 elections. Livnat has also served as Vice Chairwoman and Acting Chairwoman of the World Likud Movement, although overtly secular, Livnat is generally identified as a right wing conservative, both morally and politically. A supporter of Revisionist Zionism, she opposed the Oslo Accords as well as the notion of relinquishing control over the West Bank. In this light she has voiced concerns over US President George W. Bushs Road Map for Peace and she also regularly attends events in honor of the pre-independence militant organizations, such as the Irgun and Lehi. However, she did not actively oppose Ariel Sharons disengagement plan, Livnat described the shooting death of her nephew as an act of terrorism. An IDF report released a month later concluded that the event was not a terror attack. I dont think we should tell them how to live, said Livnat, We should live, a resident of Tel Aviv, Livnat is married and has two children. Limor Livnat on the Knesset website
29.
Igael Tumarkin
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Igael Tumarkin is an Israeli painter and sculptor. Peter Martin Gregor Heinrich Hellberg was born in Dresden, Germany and his father, Martin Hellberg, was a German theater actor and director. His mother, Berta Gurevitch and his stepfather, Herzl Tumarkin, Tumarkin served in the Israeli Navy. After completing his service, he studied sculpture in Ein Hod. His youngest son is actor Yon Tumarkin, among Tumarkins best known works are the Holocaust and Revival memorial in Rabin Square, Tel Aviv and his sculptures commemorating fallen soldiers in the Negev. Tumarkin is also a theoretician and stage designer, in the 1950s, Tumarkin worked in East Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris. Upon his return to Israel in 1961, he became a force behind the break from the charismatic monopoly of lyric abstraction there. Tumarkin created assemblages of objects, generally with violent Expressionist undertones. His determination to be different influenced his younger Israeli colleagues, the furor generated around Tumarkins works, such as the old pair of trousers stuck to one of his pictures, intensified the mystique surrounding him. One of his works is a pig wearing phylacteries. Art of Igael Tumarkin at Europeana
30.
Shulamit Aloni
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Shulamit Aloni was an Israeli politician. She founded the Ratz party, was leader of the Meretz party, in 2000, she won the Israel Prize. Shulamit Adler was born in Tel Aviv and her mother was a seamstress and her father was a carpenter, both descended from Polish rabbinical families. She was sent to boarding school during World War II while her parents served in the British Army, as a youth she was a member of the socialist Zionist Hashomer Hatzair youth movement and the Palmach. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War she was involved in struggles for the Old City of Jerusalem and was captured by Jordanian forces. Following the establishment of the state of Israel, she worked with child refugees and she taught school while studying law. She also worked as an attorney and hosted a radio show Outside Working Hours that dealt with human rights and she also wrote columns for several newspapers. She contributed the piece Up the down escalator to the 1984 anthology Sisterhood Is Global, The International Womens Movement Anthology, Shulamit Aloni died at age 85, on 24 January 2014. In 1965 Aloni was elected to the Knesset on the list of the Alignment, an alliance of Mapai and Ahdut HaAvoda, and subsequently founded the Israel Consumers Council and she left the Alignment in 1973 and established the Citizens Rights Movement, which became known as Ratz. The party advocated electoral reform, separation of religion and state and human rights, Ratz initially joined the Alignment-led government with Aloni as Minister without Portfolio but she resigned immediately in protest at the appointment of Yitzhak Rafael as Minister of Religions. Ratz briefly became Yaad – Civil Rights Movement when independent MK Aryeh Eliav joined the party, throughout the 1970s Aloni attempted to create a dialogue with Palestinians in hopes of achieving a lasting peace settlement. During the 1982 Lebanon War she established the International Center for Peace in the Middle East, in the run-up to the 1984 elections, Ratz aligned with Peace Now and the Left Camp of Israel to increase its size in the Knesset to five seats. In 1992, she led Ratz into an alliance with Shinui and Mapam to form the new Meretz party, Aloni became Minister of Education under Yitzhak Rabin but was forced to resign after a year due to her outspoken statements on matters of religion. She was reappointed Minister of Communications and Science and Culture and served until 1996 when she retired from party politics, Aloni was a board member of Yesh Din, an organisation focusing on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. She defended U. S. President Jimmy Carters use of the apartheid in the title of his book, Palestine. Later, Aloni said, I hate to cover up things that should be open to the sun, in 1998, Aloni received a special lifetime award of the Emil Grunzweig Human Rights Award by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. In 2000, she received the Israel Prize, for her achievements and special contribution to society. Democracy in Shackles, Am Oved List of Israel Prize recipients Shulamit Aloni on the Knesset website
31.
Zeev Sternhell
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Zeev Sternhell is a Polish-born Israeli historian, political scientist, commentator on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and writer. He is one of the leading experts on fascism. Sternhell headed the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Zeev Sternhell was born in Przemyśl, Poland, to an affluent secular Jewish family with Zionist tendencies. His grandfather and father were textile merchants, when the Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland, Soviet troops took over part of his home. His father died of natural causes, a few months after Germanys invasion of the Soviet Union, the family was sent to the ghetto. His mother and older sister, Ada, were killed by the Nazis when he was seven years old, an uncle who had a permit to work outside the ghetto smuggled him to Lwów. The uncle found a Polish officer who was willing to help them, supplied with false Aryan papers, Sternhell lived with his aunt, uncle and cousin as a Polish Catholic. After the war, he was baptized, taking the Polish name Zbigniew Orolski and he became an altar boy in the Cathedral of Kraków. In 1946, at the age of 11, Sternhell was taken to France on a Red Cross childrens train and he learned French and was accepted to a school in Avignon despite stiff competition. In the winter of 1951, at the age of 16, Sternhell immigrated to Israel under the auspices of Youth Aliyah, in the 1950s, he served as a platoon commander in the Golani infantry brigade, including the Sinai War. He fought as a reservist in the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, in 1957–1960, he studied history and political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, graduating with a BA cum laude. In 1969, he was awarded a Ph. D. from the Institut détudes politiques de Paris for his thesis on The Social and Political Ideas of Maurice Barrès, Sternhell lives in Jerusalem with his wife Ziva, an art historian. In 1976, Sternhell became co-editor of The Jerusalem Quarterly, remaining an active contributor until 1990, in 1981, he became a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1989, he was elected to the Léon Blum Chair of Political Science at the Hebrew University, in 1991, the French government awarded him the title of Chevalier de lOrdre des Arts et des Lettres for his outstanding contribution to French culture. In 1996, he was a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Political Ideologies, in 2008, Sternhell was awarded the Israel Prize, for Political Science. Although the award was contested in court in light of his controversial statements, rené Rémond has questioned Sternhells attribution of boulangisme to the revolutionary right-wing movements. Stanley G. Payne, for example, remarks in A History of Fascism that Zeev Sternhell has conclusively demonstrated that all the ideas found in fascism first appeared in France. Fascism developed as a movement in Italy, however, from where it exercised a prolonged influence on Nazism
32.
Maccabi Tel Aviv B.C.
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Maccabi Tel Aviv B. C. for sponsorship reasons Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv, is a professional basketball club based in Tel Aviv, Israel. The team plays in the Israeli Premier League and internationally in the EuroLeague, the club started in the mid-1930s, as part of the Maccabi Tel Aviv Sports Club, which had been founded in 1906. With six European Championships, one Adriatic Championship,51 Israeli Championships,44 Israeli Cups and it is also one of the most successful basketball teams of all time. The Israeli Basketball Super League started in 1954, and Maccabi Tel Aviv was the first champion and it has dominated the championship ever since, winning the title 50 times, including a run of 23 titles in a row between 1970 and 1992. The team has won the Israeli Basketball State Cup 41 times. Maccabi is considered Israels national sporting representative in the world, from 1969 until 2008, Maccabi Tel Aviv was sponsored by Elite, Israels largest food company, and carried its name. Since July 2008, Maccabi has had a new sponsor – Electra, since 1963, the clubs home court has been the Yad Eliyahu Arena in Tel Aviv. Originally an open-air court for 5,000 spectator, it is now an indoor arena with a capacity of 11,000. Most Maccabi head coaches have been former players of the club, yehoshua Rozin was involved with the club for 40 years. Ralph Klein started as an 18-year-old player and later had spells as a coach. Zvi Sherf played for Maccabis second team, and coached the team for three spells, Pini Gershon played in the Youth Section, and as a coach led Maccabi to three European titles, in 2001,2004, and 2005. Maccabi Tel Aviv has always provided the team with a large number of players. Five Maccabi players, headed by Avraham Shneur, were on the team that represented Israel in its first European Championship, Tanhum Cohen-Mintz was one of Europes top centers in the sixties, and was selected for the first European All Star Team which played in Madrid in 1964. Mickey Berkowitz, Motty Aroesti, Lou Silver, and Eric Minkin played a part in winning the silver medal in the European Championship in 1979 in Torino. Doron Jamchy played 16 years for the team, and holds the record for appearances. Maccabi Tel Aviv was the first Israeli club to enter the European Cup for Champions in 1958, since then, it has played over 600 games in European competitions, and was the only Israeli club to play in a Final and to win the Champions Cup on six occasions. Maccabi has played in 15 Champions Cup Finals, in 1994 and 2004, Maccabi organized the European Final Four in Tel Aviv. The first basketball game between an NBA and an FIBA team was held in 1978 in Tel Aviv, Maccabi Tel Aviv beat the defending NBA champion Washington Bullets, 98–97
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Shimon Mizrahi
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Shimon Mizrahi is an Israeli lawyer and the chairman of the Maccabi Tel Aviv Basketball Club. Mizrahi is the partner in the B. Arnon - S. Mizrahi law office and specializes in traffic violation cases, in 2006, he defended the prominent attorney Dori Klagsbald in a high-profile case of manslaughter following the death of two a mother and child killed by Klagsbalds vehicle. Shimon Mizrahi was appointed chairman of Maccabi in 1969, in the wake of the financial problems. He introduced various strategies to rescue Maccabi from bankruptcy, such as selling tickets for Maccabi games, Mizrahi realized that in order to secure Maccabis dominance in the Israeli league, it would have to sign American players. Since he became chairman in 1969 Maccabi has won the Israeli championship in all, Maccabi has also won six European cup titles. Mizrahi was accused by his rivals of failing to make the Israeli league more competitive with plans such as payment limits, in 2007, Mizrahi was chosen by Time magazine as one of 50 best sport managers in the world. In 2011, he was awarded the Israel Prize for sports, although this award was contested, it was upheld by the Israel High Court of Justice. List of Israel Prize recipients Resume of Shimon Mizrahi, Israel Prize website
34.
Benyamin Netanyahu
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Benjamin Bibi Netanyahu is the current Prime Minister of Israel. Netanyahu also currently serves as a member of the Knesset and Chairman of the Likud party, born in Tel Aviv to secular Jewish parents, Netanyahu is the first Israeli prime minister born in Israel after the establishment of the state. Netanyahu joined the Israel Defense Forces shortly after the Six-Day War in 1967, Netanyahu took part in many missions, including Operation Inferno, Operation Gift and Operation Isotope, during which he was shot in the shoulder. Netanyahu achieved the rank of captain before being discharged, after graduating from MIT with Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees, Netanyahu was recruited as an economic consultant for the Boston Consulting Group. Netanyahu returned to Israel in 1978 to found the Yonatan Netanyahu Anti-Terror Institute, named after his brother Yonatan Netanyahu, Netanyahu served as the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988. Netanyahu became the leader of Likud in 1993, Netanyahu won the 1996 elections, becoming Israels youngest ever Prime Minister, serving his first term from June 1996 to July 1999. Netanyahu moved from the arena to the private sector after being defeated in the 1999 election for prime minister by Ehud Barak. As Minister of Finance, Netanyahu engaged in a reform of the Israeli economy. Netanyahu retook the Likud leadership in December 2005, after Sharon left to form a new party, in December 2006, Netanyahu became the official Leader of the Opposition in the Knesset and Chairman of Likud. Following the 2009 parliamentary election, in which Likud placed second and right-wing parties won a majority, after the victory in the 2013 elections, he became the second person to be elected to the position of Prime Minister for a third term, after Israels founder David Ben-Gurion. In March 2015, Netanyahu was elected to his term as prime minister. Netanyahu has been elected Prime Minister of Israel four times, matching David Ben-Gurions record, Netanyahu is the only prime minister in Israels history to have been elected three times in a row. Netanyahu was born in 1949 in Tel Aviv, Israel, to an Israeli mother, Tzila Segal and a Warsaw-born father, Prof. Benzion Netanyahu, Netanyahu is of mixed Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewish heritage. He was initially raised and educated in Jerusalem, where he attended Henrietta Szold Elementary School, to this day, he speaks fluent English, with a noticeable Philadelphia accent. After graduating from school in 1967, Netanyahu returned to Israel to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces. He trained as a soldier and served for five years in an elite special forces unit of the IDF. He took part in numerous cross-border assault raids during the 1967–70 War of Attrition and he was wounded in combat on multiple occasions. He was involved in other missions, including Operation Inferno
35.
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
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Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, is a public research university in Beer-Sheva, Israel. Ben-Gurion University was established in 1969 as the University of the Negev with the aim of promoting the development of the Negev desert that comprises more than sixty percent of Israel. The University was later renamed after Israels founder and first prime minister David Ben-Gurion, after Ben-Gurions death in 1973, the University was renamed Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Today, Ben-Gurion University is a center for teaching and research with about 20,000 students and this was the genesis of Computer Science education at Ben-Gurion University which eventually lead to a separate Department of Computer Science. The Medical School for International Health grew out of collaborations between faculty at Ben-Gurion University and Columbia University, a joint global health and medical care program, it was established in 1997. The MSIH is a four-year, North American-style medical school that incorporates global health coursework into all four years of the school curriculum. It is an English-language collaboration between Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Faculty of Health Sciences and Columbia University Medical Center and is located in Beer-Sheva, the school enrolls more than 40 students each year. Most of the students are from the United States, with several from Canada, BGU has been ranked 320th in the world, 70th in Asia and 4th in Israel according to the 2016 QS World University Rankings. BGU also ranked 31st overall in the ranking of young universities according to the 2016 QS Top 50 Under 50, BGU is ranked between 101st and 150th overall in computer science accordong to the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities in Computer Science for four consecutive years. He previously served as the countrys Foreign Minister, Finance Minister, minister of science and deputy defense minister Eliezer Shkedi, CEO of the Israeli national airline, El Al. Sonnenfeldt, Owner and Chairman of TIGER21, Chairman of Magnolia Purchasing Advisors, the lead owner and Chairman of SOL, Inc. and Chairman of Carmanah Technologies, Ltd
36.
David Grossman
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David Grossman is an Israeli author. His books have been translated more than 30 languages, and have won numerous prizes. He addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his 2008 novel, To the End of the Land, since that books publication he has written a childrens book, an opera for children and several poems. His most recent book, Falling Out of Time, deals with the grief of parents in the aftermath of their childrens death and he is the elder of two brothers. His mother, Michaella, was born in Mandate Palestine, his father, Yitzhak and his mothers family was Zionist and poor, his grandfather having paved roads in the Galilee and supplementing his income by buying and selling rugs. His maternal grandmother was a manicurist and his paternal grandmother left Poland after being harassed by police, never before having left the region where shed been born. Along with her son and daughter, she traveled to Palestine where she became a cleaner in wealthy neighbourhoods. Grossmans father was a bus driver, then a librarian, and it was him that David – a reading child – was able to build up an interest in literature. Grossman recalled, He gave me many things, but what he gave me was Sholem Aleichem. Aleichem, who was born in Ukraine, is one of the greatest writers in Yiddish, at age 9, Grossman won a national competition on knowledge of the works of Sholem Aleichem, and subsequently worked as a child actor for the national radio. He continued working for Israel Broadcasting for nearly 25 years, in 1971, Grossman began his national service working in military intelligence. Although he was in the army when the Yom Kippur War broke out in 1973, Grossman studied philosophy and theater at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After university he started working in radio, where hed once been a child actor and he eventually became an anchor on Kol Yisrael, Israels national broadcasting service. In 1988 he was sacked for refusing to bury the news that the Palestinian leadership had declared its own state, Grossman lives in Mevasseret Zion on the outskirts of Jerusalem. He is married to Michal Grossman, a child psychologist and they have three children, Jonathan, Ruth, and Uri. Uri was a tank-commander, killed in 2006 in Lebanon during the war between Israel and the Hizbollah, uris life was later celebrated in Grossmans book Falling Out of Time. Grossman is a peace activist who is politically left-wing. I believe that there is more than one course of action available, two days later, his 20-year-old son Uri, a staff sergeant in an armoured unit, was killed by an anti-tank missile during an IDF operation in southern Lebanon shortly before the ceasefire
37.
International Convention Center (Jerusalem)
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The International Convention Center, commonly known as Binyenei HaUma, is a concert hall and convention center in Givat Ram in Jerusalem, Israel. It is the largest convention center in the Middle East, Binyenei HaUma was first envisioned by Alexander Ezer and planned by architect Zeev Rechter who won the design competition in 1949. The complex was under construction from 1950 to 1963, though it began operations in 1956 with a meeting of the World Zionist Organization, rechters design was a solid structure faced in Jerusalem stone. Instead of a relief by artists Joseph Zaritsky and Yitzhak Danziger as originally planned. Its largest hall, the Menachem Ussishkin auditorium, seats 3,104, in all,12,000 square metres of exhibit space extend over two levels and ten display areas. Binyenei HaUma is the home of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the complex has hosted many international events, among them the Eurovision Song Contest 1979, Eurovision Song Contest 1999 and the Jerusalem International Book Fair. The trial of John Demjanjuk was held there, plans are being discussed to enlarge the ICC by 30,000 square meters, doubling of the parking space, adding three office towers, commercial space and a hotel. The Center figures as a setting in Robert J. Sawyers 1997 novel Frameshift. It serves as a post-World War II venue for a war crimes trial, International Convention Center official website Jewish Agency for Israel
38.
Jerusalem Theatre
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The Jerusalem Theatre is a centre for the performing arts in Jerusalem, Israel. The complex consists of the Sherover Theatre, which seats 950, the Henry Crown Symphony Hall with 750 seats, the Rebecca Crown Auditorium, with 450 seats, and the Little Theatre with 110 seats. Changing art exhibits are held in the foyer and other spaces in the building. In 1958, the Jerusalem Municipality, headed by Mordechai Ish Shalom, held a competition for a municipal theatre on a plot of 11 dunams. Architects Michael Nadler, Shulamit Nadler and Shmuel Bixson won first prize, the municipality also received a large donation from the Jewish millionaire Miles Sherover, who made his fortune in Venezuela. The cornerstone laying took place in October 1964, despite plans to complete the building within two years, work progressed slowly due to disputes and budgetary problems. Critics claimed that the city had more pressing problems and predicted that the theatre would be a white elephant, the building was dedicated in October 1971. The money was used to build the Henry Crown Concert Hall, which seats 750, and the Rebecca Crown Auditorium, which seats 450. The planning and design of the new wing was carried out by the architectural firm, so that the new wing. The theatre combines elements of exposed concrete with traditional Jerusalem stone construction. It sits in a public square that is used for outdoor concerts. International Convention Center Music of Israel Architecture of Israel Culture of Israel Jerusalem Theatre website
39.
Yardena Arazi
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Yardena Arazi is an Israeli singer and entertainer. Yardena Arazi was born on Kibbutz Kabri and grew up in Haifa, Arazi is the daughter of Jewish immigrants from France and Germany. She joined the Beit Rothschild group at 16 and became its lead vocalist and she did her military service in the Nahal entertainment troupe. Arazi is married to engineer Nathan Tomer, with whom she has a daughter, in the 1970s, Yardena Arazi was a member of the female vocal trio Chocolate, Menta, Mastik along with Leah Lupatin and Rutie Holzman. The group represented Israel in the 1976 Eurovision Song Contest with the song Emor Shalom, Arazi left the band in 1978. In 1979, the Israel Broadcasting Authority asked Arazi to co-host the Eurovision Song Contest in Jerusalem with news anchor Daniel Peer and her hosting received positive reviews across Europe and she participated in TV shows in the Netherlands and Belgium. Arazi was signed to a contract with record label Ariola Records. During this period she met Natan Tomer and decided to return to Israel and she kept performing around the world including Australia, Poland, Turkey, Los Angeles and Egypt. Arazi took part at the Israelis Eurovision domestic competition three times as a singer and as a co-host. In 1988, she was selected internally by IBA to sing the Israeli entry for Eurovision and during a special TV show in which she presented four news songs, eventually, she went to Dublin with the song Ben Adam, which came in seventh. Arazi has always been highly superstitious and consults an astrologer on all matters in her life, the astrologer told her the song performed 9th would win the competition in Dublin, Ireland. Israel had drawn 9th in the order, so Arazi agreed to represent Israel. However, when Cyprus withdrew from the contest, Israels position shifted to 8th, the 9th song did win the competition, with the Swiss triumphing from that position. In 1989 Arazi recorded the album Desert Fantasy than included 10 Hebrew versions of Arabic songs originally written and sung by Farid al-Atrash, Fairuz, Abdul Halim, Samira Said, the album was also released in the US and Japan and was hugely successful all around the middle east. Since 1997 Arazi has focused on her career as a TV host, for 9 years she co-hosted the channel 2 morning magazine Cafe Telad, and later on she hosted at Channel 1, Channel 2, GLZ radio station etc. At 2008 Arazi was named the most popular Israeli singer of all time at the 60th Independence Day celebration, list of Eurovision Song Contest presenters MySpace Homepage Biography
40.
Footnote (film)
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Footnote is a 2011 Israeli drama film written and directed by Joseph Cedar, starring Shlomo Baraba and Lior Ashkenazi. The plot revolves around the relationship between a father and son who teach at the Talmud department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The film won the Best Screenplay Award at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, Footnote won nine prizes at the 2011 Ophir Awards, becoming Israels entry for the 84th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. On 18 January 2012, the film was named as one of the nine shortlisted entries for the Oscars, on 24 January 2012, the film was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Foreign Language Film, but lost to the Iranian film A Separation. Eliezer Shkolnik is a philologist who researches the different versions and phrasings of the Jerusalem Talmud and he and his son Uriel are both professors at the Talmudic Research department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The father, on the hand, is a stubborn old-school purist in his research methods. Eliezer is also critical of the new methods of research used by his son and other modern researchers. His ambition is to be recognized by being awarded the Israel Prize and his nature and the lack of recognition have made him bitter, anti-social, and envious of his sons popularity. Eliezer receives a call from the Minister of Education. She tells Eliezer that he was elected this years laureate of the Israel Prize, the following day Uriel is summoned to an urgent meeting with the Israel Prize committee. Uriel is told that an error had occurred and that in fact it was he, not his father, the committee wishes to discuss ways to correct the error, but Uriel objects, saying the revelation would devastate his father. Uriel and the head of the committee, Grossman, argue over the issue until Uriel loses his temper, regretting his outburst, Uriel relents, and asks that the committee permit him to break the news to his father personally. During the meeting Uriel says he has been submitting his fathers name for the Israel Prize every year, and accuses Grossman of blocking that and other ways of recognizing Eliezer. According to Grossman, Eliezer never published anything significant in his career, Uriel goes to the National Library to break the news to his father but finds him raising a toast to winning the prize with colleagues. Unable to break the news, he again meets with Grossman. Grossman relents but with two conditions, Uriel must write the recommendation and Uriel can never be a candidate for the prize. When the interview is published, Uriel is angry but keeps his secret, later, though, he whispers the secret to his mother. She does not disclose the truth to anyone else, during preparations for a television interview, Eliezer is struck by a word in the Israel Prize committees recommendation
41.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
