Breaking news: New: Tourist Groups Can Enter Israel Without 3rd VaccineBy Aryeh Savir, Tazpit News Agency and San Diego school board modifies resolution calling for ‘unbiased’ materials on Israel and Newly Discovered Documents of Yemenite Olim Testify to Jewish life in Jerusalem’s Kfar HaShiloach By Aryeh Savir, Tazpit News Agency and Startup Genome Ranks Tel Aviv University 5th in the World in Entrepreneurship
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
The Corona Cabinet approved a new outline, on Sunday evening, that will enable groups of tourists vaccinated with two COVID-19 vaccines to enter Israel, even if more than six months have passed from the time they received the vaccine, and even if they have not received the third vaccine.
The efficacy of the second vaccine has been proved to diminish over time, thus requiring a third booster vaccine.
Israel is seeking ways to rehabilitate the tourism industry and to ensure that the hundreds of thousands of people working in the industry can continue to remain employed.
These tourists are required to obtain an entry permit from the Ministry of Tourism prior to arrival in Israel, and must come from "green" and "yellow" countries with low infection rates, according to the classification of the Ministry of Health.
The groups, consisting of five to 40 tourists, will be run as a capsule, with restrictions on walking around in places with an increased risk of infection such as clubs or bars.
During the first seven days of their stay, the "unprotected" tourists in the group will perform a PCR test every 72 hours or present a negative result in an antigen test performed every 24 hours.
The group leader will keep a record of the group's conduct, contacts, places and visiting hours, and will present it to an epidemiological researcher if a patient is found in the group.
Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz stated after the vote that "also in tourism, we will live alongside the Corona."
"We are taking all precautions and controls to maintain public health and identify new variants quickly. At the same time, we are maintaining the Israeli economy, education, culture, tourism and the routine of life in Israel," he said.
Tourism Minister Yoel Razvozov said that the government is "removing restrictions and approving more tourists to enter Israel. The road to returning tourists is still long, so we must act quickly and correctly to increase the number of tourists to Israel."
"The Israeli economy needs it, and of course, the tourism industry workers need it," he added.
The outline requires the approval of the Knesset's Constitution Committee, after which it will take effect immediately.
Some 34,500 tourists visited Israel in September, 128% more than last year when Israel was in the midst of its third Coronavirus wave, but still 91.5% less than September 2019, when 405,000 tourists entered Israel.
September, during which the Jewish High Holidays are usually celebrated, is a peak season for tourism in Israel.
In the first nine months of 2021, about 243,500 tourists visited Israel, compared to 782,700 in the corresponding period in 2020, but still 69% more than the same period in 2019.
The Three Musketeers at the Kotel
Newly Discovered Documents of Yemenite Olim Testify to Jewish life in Jerusalem's Kfar HaShiloach By Aryeh Savir, Tazpit News Agency
Photo Credit: Kfar HaShiloach Public Council
Documents from the Yemenite Village in Kfar Shiloach.
Original documents belonging to Yemenite Olim from the 1880s who lived in Kfar HaShiloach were recently discovered and brought to light. These documents are thrilling testimonies of the Jewish life in the village situated right outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City.
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The Jewish presence in Kfar HaShiloach dates back to 1881 when Yemenite Jews came to Jerusalem and established a community, and at its height, ran five synagogues and numbered some 160 families.
Encountering Arab violence and attacks for several years, the community was forced to finally abandon the area in 1939, and the synagogues were desecrated by Muslim attackers.
Israel reunited its capital in 1967, and the Jews began to return to the area some 20 years ago, reacquiring one property after another, including some of the synagogues.
The newly discovered documents were part of an estate left by Mazal Cohen, a member of the Tabib family, a Palmach fighter who was a candidate to light a beacon in 2017 during Israel's 69th Independence Day. they were handed over by her son Ronen Cohen to Gadi Bashari, Chairman of the Kfar HaShiloach Public Council and member of the board of directors of the Zionist Archives.
Cohen recalled that while taking care of his late mother in her last months, he came across "a swollen bag of yellowing documents folded together."
"Slowly, I separated the pile of documents, which included pictures that shed light on the story of the Tabib family in the Jewish village of Shiloach and the community life there. This revelation connected me and my family to my grandparents and the Yemenite community of Olim, who came among the pioneers of the First Aliyah and settled in the Shiloach village," he explained.
One of the documents is Mazal's birth certificate, signed by the Yemenite village's Mukhtar (Head of the village) Aharon Maliach. Another document has details regarding the family's tax payments to the village committee and to the British Mandate's government.
Another documents, from 1942, is a confirmation from Maliach, apparently to be presented to the British police who prevented the Yemenite Jews from entering the village after its evacuation in 1938. The confirmation was given to Mazal's father, Shlomo Tabib, who wanted to enter the village to dismantle iron and wooden planks from his house to use them as construction materials.
Another document from 1951 attests to the existence of an ancient Yemenite Torah scroll that Shlomo Tabib brought with him from Aden, Yemen, and passed it to a member of his family who also came from Yemen in those years, to care for and preserve.
Copies of the documents will be transferred to the Public Council archives and will be displayed in the visitors' center of the ancient Ohel Shlomo synagogue, in the Shiloach village.
Bashari said excitedly that "for decades, these documents have been kept in the home of the deceased. These many testimonies of the Jewish life in the village are so thrilling, since they renew, in the most tangible way, the connection between the two generations: the original residents of Kfar Hashiloach and us, who follow in their footsteps and continue their way and their heritage."
The documents "will reveal to the future generations many new aspects of the story of the village that existed at the foot of the City of David and the Old City of Jerusalem," he said,
Cohen expressed hope that the documents, "which are written in the curly Rashi script, and some of which I have not yet deciphered, can reveal to others another piece of the story of this amazing community, and pay them the respect that they deserve."
San Diego school board modifies resolution calling for 'unbiased' materials on Israel
While language about teaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was removed from the original version, district policy still requires such topics to be covered in an unbiased way," stated StandWithUs CEO Roz Rothstein.BY JACOB KAMARAS
San Diego Board of Education. Source: Screenshot/Google Maps.Republish this articleSpread the word. Help JNS grow! Share now:
(October 27, 2021 / JNS) The San Diego Unified School District's Board of Trustees on Tuesday approved, though modified, a resolution condemning anti-Semitism that would have also supported "unbiased and politically neutral" classroom materials pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In the approved version of the resolution, the board stated that it "affirms the rights of Jewish students, staff and families, and will continue to work to update and revise existing curriculum, bulletins, instructional resources [and] reading lists to ensure they are inclusive and reflective of best practices and the full diversity of Jewish people, including those in California and San Diego; provide training for teachers, staff, administrators, students and parents; and to address, prevent and respond to anti-Semitism."
At the same time, the board removed language that noted that the district "operates a robust ethnic-studies program, seeking to recognize the incredible contributions of minority communities and to promote cultural inclusion," as well as a clause that would have supported "balanced and open classroom discussion, including the use of unbiased and politically neutral materials on issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict … while condemning content that delegitimizes the right of any people, including Jews and Palestinians, to self-determination."
StandWithUs CEO Roz Rothstein told JNS, "This resolution is a positive step and includes important commitments from the school district. It recognizes the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism as an educational tool, acknowledges different forms of anti-Semitism from across the political spectrum and includes key actions to fight this hatred. While language about teaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was removed from the original version, district policy still requires such topics to be covered in an unbiased way. We will continue to work with students, parents and other members of the community to build on this resolution."
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Before the modified resolution's passage, leaders of the Jewish Federation of San Diego County, the Anti-Defamation League's San Diego branch and the San Diego Rabbinic Association circulated a petition that encouraged the school district to affirm its "commitment to teaching ethnic studies while fighting back against anti-Semitism to make our schools more welcoming for students of all backgrounds and faiths."
Nevertheless, board president Richard Barrera did not believe the district's resolution should be included in ethnic-studies education, reported CBS News 8.
Earlier this month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a controversial bill that made ethnic studies a requirement for all public schools within 10 years. Seventy-four religious, civil rights and education organizations, as well as thousands of private citizens, had urged Newsom to veto the bill since it doesn't enable the state to prevent local educational agencies from using a previously vetoed-on first draft of the state's ethnic-studies curriculum that contains anti-Semitic language.
The amended resolution's approval comes after San Diego's American Federation of Teachers Guild, Local 1931, in September released a statement that argued that "condemning Israel for its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, occupation, apartheid and war crimes is not anti-Semitism."
In May, the United Educators of San Francisco became the first teachers' union in the country to pass a resolution supporting the BDS movement, and in September, the United Teachers Los Angeles union voted to postpone a pro-BDS resolution.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University.
Tel Aviv University was ranked fifth in the world in the ranking of Startup Genome (a world-leading innovation policy advisory and research firm) for 2021. The prestigious ranking reflects the involvement of alumni of the world's leading universities in entrepreneurship and in the establishment of scaleup companies (companies that have advanced beyond the startup stage and their worth is estimated at $50m or more).
The top four institutions in the ranking are leading American universities – Stanford, MIT, UC Berkeley, and Harvard, with Tel Aviv University coming right after. Tel Aviv University is the only non-American university in the ranking's top 10, which also include Cornell, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University. According to the ranking, about 1,300 TAU alumni have founded active companies in a vast range of areas over the last decades, and about 40 of these have attained the status of scaleup companies.
This designation joins the PitchBook's, which annually places TAU among the top 10 institutions producing venture capital-backed entrepreneurs Here too, TAU is the only non-American university ranked in the top 10.
Prof. Moshe Zviran, Dean of the Coller School of Management and Chief Entrepreneurship and Innovation Officer at TAU: "This is a very significant achievement for both Tel Aviv University and the State of Israel. The Startup Genome ranking is a standard of entrepreneurial excellence of the highest level in the world. Israel in general, and TAU as its leading entrepreneurial university, form fertile ground for uniquely creative young entrepreneurs who establish independent companies and hold key positions in the world's leading corporations. The rich toolbox which our students acquire during their studies serves them well when they enter the job market. We are proud of our alumni and students for this achievement and will continue to fortify TAU's position in the top echelons of global entrepreneurship."
