Bat mitzvah in Nigeria

How do you dress for a bat mitzvah in Nigeria? Not much different than in Israel - with a fluffy pink dress and a crown! Gadi Bentley, who was Shavei Israel's first emissary to Africa's Igbo Jewish community (we wrote about him here and his successors, Noga Kohl and Michal...

In 1945, when the Nazis were defeated and World War II came to a tragic close, Marcel Zielinski set out on foot from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and walked back to his hometown of Krakow. [caption id="attachment_32655" align="alignleft" width="300"] Marcel Zielinski at Auschwitz[/caption] Seventy-one years later, Zielinski...

Beit Miriam is Shavei Israel's community center for Bnei Menashe youth in Kiryat Arba, south of Jerusalem. This unique social and cultural club offers courses in computers, English, Hebrew and Judaism. It is a home away from home for the next generation of Bnei Menashe...

One hundred and twenty one men, women and children joined the Jewish faith last month in a far off country better known as the title to a Disney film than a hotbed of religious resurgence....

A Roman aristocrat once asked Rabbi Yosi Ben Halafta, one of the Mishna’s leading sages, a provocative question. “In how many days did G-d create the world?” she queried. “In six,” he answered. “And what has G-d been doing since then,” she asked. “Matching couples for marriage,” Rabbi Yosi...

This weekend, the Jewish world celebrated the holiday of Shavuot, marking the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai 3,300 years ago. The Subbotnik Jewish community in Visoky, Russia, hasn't been around quite that long - the community was formed when peasants in southern Russia embraced Jewish...

Yom Yerushalayim - Jerusalem Day - marks the reunification of Israel's capital following the Six Day War in 1967. It is an emotional day for veteran Israelis and even more so for new immigrants who only recently saw Jerusalem for the first time. A group of...