In the News

[caption id="attachment_8917" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Aaron Klein, WABC talk show host to interview Michael Freund"][/caption] Shavei Israel Chairman Michael Freund was interviewed this week on the Aaron Klein Show. The program aired on Sunday night at 8:45 PM New York time. Aaron Klein hosts his show on...

Globetrotters– listen up. Shavei Israel founder Michael Freund will be in Hong Kong at the end of the month and will be speaking at the Hong Kong JCC about Shavei Israel’s activities around the world. If you’re a Hong Kong resident or will be traveling to...

[caption id="attachment_7360" align="alignleft" width="116" caption="Rabbi Ellis"][/caption] The following article appeared on the Haaretz website. Articles were also published in Ynet and the European Jewish Press. See also our press release on Rabbi Ellis. There was a time when Eastern Europe's Jewish communities sent emissaries to serve...

As Shavei Israel's delegate, Rabbi Elisha Salas to teach Torah, Jewish culture and Jewish tradition to Bnei Anousim Beginning this week, Rabbi Elisha Salas will be Shavei Israel’s new emissary to the Bnei Anousim, or crypto-Jews of North Portugal. Rabbi Salas, 53, was born in Chile and made aliyah to Israel in 1999. Salas now lives in Jerusalem and is married with four children. After graduating from Santiago University in Chile with two degrees in accounting and religious studies, Salas spent five years at the Beit Midrash Sepharadi in the Old City of Jerusalem. In addition to being an ordained rabbi, Salas is certified to practice as a "shochet" (kosher slaughterer). As Shavei Israel's emissary in Portugal, Rabbi Salas will teach Torah, Jewish culture and Jewish tradition to Bnei Anousim (whom historians refer to by the derogatory term "Marranos"), conducting a wide range of social and educational activities in the process. The rabbi’s work will focus mainly in the Belmonte community, where a number of Bnei Anousim returned to Judaism in recent decades and now live as a traditional, thriving Jewish community. Salas will also work with Bnei Anousim in other areas and towns throughout Portugal, primarily in the north.
A descendant of long extinct Jewish community of Kaifeng, China, weds new Oleh from United States in Jerusalem's Great Synagogue. 'I can't think of better example of ingathering exiles ' says Shavei Israel chair, who organized ceremony Ynetnews Israel Jewish Scene A groovy kind of love: A historic and very special ceremony took place last Thursday in the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem: Shoshana Rebecca Li, of the Jewish community of Kaifeng, China, wed Ami Emmanuel, am immigrant from the United States.