On a recent weekday evening, I joined a group of women at Shivtei Yisrael Shul in Ra'anana, who were participating in The Six Million Project. We all sat at tables and were given a page with 100 very small small rectangles and a selection of special acrylic pens with which to color in each one. The Six Million Project, is a global art initiative th...

By Suzie Schwartz and Anita Leigh When Anita Leigh, whom I first met through our shul community showed me her European Postcard Collection originally belonging to her family, I was enthralled. Anita's father Gideon and grandparents Hermann and Natalie Kolb lived in Vienna where they ran a textile business until the outbreak of World War 2 (WW2). Be...

As a child in Johannesburg in the 1950s and 60s I was quite used to hearing English spoken in a variety of accents. However, it was almost always spoken with the local South African inflections, all clear to my young ears. In 1962, when I was fourteen, I moved to Israel and quickly learned to deal with a new variety of English and, of course, to sp...

 From members of the Editorial Board Carol Novis Looking back on my years writing, editing and serving on the board of ESRA Magazine, I was struck by not only how pleasant it had been to work with so many interesting and devoted fellow writers and editors (in particular Merle), but also by how many wonderful people in Israel I had the privileg...

Much has been written about how our Merle Guttmann, who arrived in Israel in 1962 with architect husband Gert and two baby girls (a third Sabra daughter was born a few years later), changed the Aliyah experience for English-speaking immigrants, and gifted thousands upon thousands of people with hope and help. ESRA, which she founded about fifteen y...