News Brief

The month of Elul, which precedes Tishrei and the High Holy Days, is accompanied by a shofar blast in many synagogues during morning services.
Some new Israelis got a personal concert on Monday.

Adam Mayer-Deutsch, above left, part of a delegation of 235 Jews from North America who made aliyah under the auspices of the Jewish Agency and the Nefesh B’Nefesh program, blew the shofar as part of a welcoming ceremony on the Ben Gurion Airport tarmac.

The Greenpeace slogan: “Come to Israel, be arrested with friends.”

Fourteen activists in the environmental organization, aboard the Rainbow Warrior ship, were taken into custody by Israel’s Coast Guard in the Ashkelon harbor last week when they spray-painted the words “Quit Coal” on the side of the cargo ship Cape Heron, which was unloading coal bound for an existing power plant.

Imagine there’s no controversy.

It’s not so easy in Israel, but former Beatle Paul McCartney, on his first visit to the Jewish state last week, tried.

Forty-three years after the Beatles were to give a concert in Israel — the concert fell through because of either conservative politicians or dueling promoters — Sir Paul performed in Tel Aviv’s HaYarkon Park, ignoring protests by Palestinian politicians and threats by Islamic clerics.

met at the Wingate Institute in the 1990s and competed at the highest levels of international tennis, won the doubles title at the Australian Open last week.

Their victory marked the first Israeli championship in a Grand Slam tournament — Ram had twice shared a Grand Slam mixed doubles title with a woman from another country.

Normally, the image of a soldier in uniform in Germany is frightening to Jews.

These pictures are comforting.

The uniforms, and the soldiers, are Israeli.

Normally, the image of a soldier in uniform in Germany is frightening to Jews.
These pictures are comforting.
The uniforms, and the soldiers, are Israeli.
Each year Israel sends several hundred active-duty soldiers — most of them sergeants — and police officers to Europe to build ties with the Jewish communities in such countries as Germany, Poland and Hungary, and to give the Israelis an on-site education about the Holocaust.

For two millennia the Jews of Ethiopia celebrated a unique holiday, Sigd, 50 days after Yom Kippur, which marked the ancient giving of the Torah by reciting Psalms, fasting, dancing, hiking to the nearest mountain and longing to return to the Promised Land.

Now returned to the land of Israel, Ethiopian Jews continue to celebrate Sigd,
This year, for the first time, Sigd was an official state holiday.

Chanukah 5769 is one for the books — the Guinness Book of World Records.
Around the world this week, several Jewish communities vied to establish various records – largest menorah, largest crowd, largest number of menorahs concurrently lit – at their public celebrations of the Holiday of Lights.

In the Haftorah reading in synagogue last week, Ezekiel prophesizes a united Holy Land: “And they shall no longer be divided into two kingdoms.”

For lovers of Israel, for residents of the Jewish state, for anyone fearing the threat of a two-state solution advanced in the peace process, for this soldier saying his morning prayers this week overlooking Gaza, the ancient promise has contemporary resonance.

Samuel J. Wurzelbacher of Toledo, Ohio, became the most famous plumber in the United States during this year’s presidential campaign for a question he asked then Sen. Barack Obama about the candidate’s tax policies.

Now Joe the Plumber is Joe the War Correspondent.
Wurzelbacher, who became a campaign punch line and John McCain supporter, went to Israel last week to report on the war in Gaza for the conservative Pajamas TV (www.pjtv.com) Web site.