By Michael Freund You’ve probably never heard of a town called Kanczuga in southeastern Poland. It is a tiny point on the map, just another one of countless thousands of villages in Eastern Europe where, over the centuries, Jews lived, worked and dreamt of redemption. They toiled...
By Michael Freund Over and over again, the same refrains were uttered: “We must unite,” “We all share the same fate” and “We must learn to live together with one another despite our differences.” Continue reading ...
By Michael Freund After a long and tiring flight throughout the night, the band of new immigrants emerged from the El Al plane and made their way slowly down the stairs, their senses heightened by the early-morning chill as well as the knowledge that their cherished...
Ladino and all that it embodies are part and parcel of our people’s long and winding journey on the historical stage. By any rational yardstick, the legacy of medieval Spanish Jewry should long ago have met its demise. The community, Europe’s largest and most influential at...
Aliyah has always been the lifeblood of the nation, so it is essential that steps be taken to significantly boost the rate of immigration, as this will ensure that the country continues to prosper. At first glance, the statistics published last week by the Jewish Agency...
Indeed, if one looks back over the past 70 years, it becomes readily apparent that some of our nation’s most stirring moments have been those that involved the rescue of Diaspora Jewish communities. In the annals of modern Jewish history, few stories are as epic or...
“The genetic record, now suggests that conversos – or people who shared ancestry with them – came to the Americas in disproportionate numbers”. In recent years, as a growing number of Bnei Anusim, descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews forcibly converted centuries ago, have begun to...
The group which made aliya last week was the first to arrive in over a year and a half, and the first from the northeastern Indian state of Mizoram to move to Israel in more than three years. Last week, less than a month shy of...
Shavei Israel Chairman Michael Freund was interviewed on Israel's IBA News in English following his historic meeting last month with Pope Francis in Poland. You can listen to the audio here. [audio mp3="https://www.shavei.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Interview-with-IBA-English-News-meeting-with-Pope.mp3"][/audio] And read Michael's account of his meeting with the pope from The Jerusalem Post...
This week marks the anniversary of the death of one of the greatest Jewish figures of the past five centuries, a man whose scholarship and public service were so breathtaking in scope that despite the passage of many generations, he continues to stand out in...
