After a long illness of 17 years, my mother, Cynthia Sandra Kahanovitz passed away on December 13, 2020. She is mourned by her husband, Keevan, 3 daughters and 9 grandchildren. In 1977, Keevan, Cynthia and their children left Port Elizabeth, South Africa, to make a new home in Raanana. It was a life-long dream of hers. We, her children, learnt eigh...

Renee Sacks was born on October 5, 1935 and passed away on January 21, 2021. She was raised in Brooklyn, New York and spent most of her adolescent years between New York and Tel Aviv. Her grandfather Shmuel Sacks was the founder of Meshi Sacks (Sacks Silks), one of the early textile factories in Israel. She immigrated to Israel in 1950. In 1954 she...

To Rhona Berzack We are lucky to have two apartments for Chayalim Bodedim (lone soldiers) in Modiin, and are currently establishing a third. The soldiers depend on us for all of their needs, but thanks to ESRA Modiin's knitting group, we are confident they will be comfortable and warm this winter. As in the past, the knitting group has graciously a...

The year is 1988. The receptionist in the Manhattan office where I worked was an interesting woman. Mary Tetrault, a widow, retired, a former ladies fashion designer in New York's Garment Center, a French Canadian Catholic who spoke perfect Yiddish. She lived in a doorman building on Fifth Avenue in the East 60s across from Central Park, near Templ...

The room smelled of freshly baked products, percolated coffee and lovely crustless sandwiches. My Grandma and her friends were dressed up to the nines. There were usually between 4-6 ladies there. They would eat, talk and play. They would take turns rotating in and out of this mysterious, yet intriguing game. Once the game began, you could feel a s...

Carole Glauber, award-winning photographer and photo historian Over the past few in-and-out-of-lockdown months, I've started to sort through a stack of old photographs and put them into existing or new albums. It's taking me longer than anticipated as I'm constantly being waylaid by memories. How evocative the photos are of a time and place in the past, not only of my own increasingly distant childhood, but al...

True History-Brilliant: In ancient Israel, it came to pass that a trader by the name of Abraham Com did taketh unto himself a healthy young wife by the name of Dorothy. And Dot Com, as she came to be known, was a comely woman: large of breast, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she was often called 'Amazon' Dot Com. And she said unto Abraha...

Etching from the diary of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore of Windmill and Alms Houses Credit: Jerusalem Foundation Parts of the reconstructed mill mechanism Photo: Richard Gordon Entrance to the reconstructed windmill wine center View eastwards from Mishkenot Sha’ananim towards Gethsemane Photo: Richard Gordon Designed in Kent, saved by Ramsgate, now a £1M wineshop In 1857 the English Jewish philanthropist, Sir Moses Montefiore built—thanks to a bequest by American philanthropist Judah Touro—a Kentish windmill overlooking the holy city of Jerusalem. Today, more than 150 years later, it is alive and kicking though not quite as Sir Moses would have expecte...

In December 1964, the MV Bilu became the first car-ferry to cross the Atlantic, sailing from Haifa on a 17-day voyage to Miami, Florida. Described as a "Motel Ship" in a New York Times article, some passengers called her the "floating youth hostel". The Bilu could sleep 524 passengers in 172 two- or four-bunk cabins, and the "restaurant" was a pay-...

A neighbourhood in Haifa at night. Every outside light left on by carelessness, every street light too high or too strong, draws a sea turtle hatchling in the wrong direction, confuses a firefly away from its mate, disrupts someone’s sleep... Since I was a little girl the beauty of the stars has enchanted me. I wanted to understand the secrets of the universe, and I knew it had something to do with the stars. I was sure I was going to become an astronaut, and get just a little closer to infinity. Well, I didn't become an astronaut, but I never lost my love of the stars. I have spent wee...