102 Bnei Menashe from Mizoram are making aliyah this week. The first group of 30 arrived Tuesday night. 72 more will land at Ben-Gurion Airport on Thursday. It's the first aliyah from Mizoram since January 2014 and the start of Operation Menashe 2017 which will...
Looking for kosher cheese in Portugal? Head to Belmonte where Shavei Israel’s emissary Rabbi Elisha Salas is supervising a new line of kosher sheep cheese. This is not Rabbi Salas’s first dip into cheese-making. He has supervised cheese production in Trancoso, another Portuguese city with...
El Salvador's Bnei Anousim community has opened a new beit midrash, offering options for study and prayer in two daily sessions. The study hall is located in the Beit Israel synagogue in the capital city of San Salvador. Participants are studying Jewish Law, the Torah...
With great joy, the Bnei Anousim community of Barranquilla, Colombia honored the reception of a new Torah scroll with a traditional Hachnasat Sefer Torah ceremony. The festive event was filled with singing and dancing together with the Torah scrolls, expressing the unbreakable tie between...
In the Biblical tractate of Pirkei Avot, it is written "Im ein kemach, ein Torah," which means that "without sustenance [kemach], there cannot be Torah." But kemach is also Hebrew for bread, and on Shabbat the phrase could be read "without a yummy challah or...
In the winter, when the sun begins to set earlier and earlier on Friday afternoons, observant Jews in the Diaspora all encounter a similar problem: they must leave work before their colleagues in order to be home in time for the start of Shabbat. Bnei...
Shavei Israel Chairman Michael Freund was interviewed on Israel Radio's English-language service about the dramatic developments taking place in Sicily and southern Italy. Michael discusses the long Jewish history of Italy, including the impact of the Inquisition which drove many Jews underground to become Anousim,...
Shavei Israel’s popular "Do You Have Jewish Roots?" book is now available in Italian. Already published in Spanish and Portuguese, the 109-page book is the first-ever practical guide to discovering one’s Jewish heritage. Its nine chapters cover all the major questions someone at the beginning...
More than 500 years after the expulsion of the Jews from Sicily, Palermo’s small Jewish community is set to celebrate the opening of its first synagogue since the Spanish Inquisition. The synagogue will be built atop the ruins of the former Great Synagogue of Palermo....
The president of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, visited the Jewish community in Lisbon. Shavei Israel's Portuguese emissary Rabbi Elisha Salas was among the dignitaries attending, along with the Israeli ambassador to Portugal and representatives of the three Jewish communities in Portugal....
