Will you join Beth Ami’s Israel Committee to help bring Israel Programming to Sonoma County? The committee arranges non-political opportunities to learn about Israel: our People and our homeland. To join the committee, contact Eli Cohen at EliCohen@IsraelUpdate.INFO. To just be notified of our events, sign up at http://List.IsraelUpdate.INFO. Our committee’s focus is learning more about and celebrating the People Israel (Jews throughout the world) and the Land of Israel (the land we pray about and our history). For more than 20 years, we have accomplished the following:
• programming Israel Independence Day Celebrations (Yom haAtzmaut)
• Helping to program the Israel Memorial Day Observance (Yom haZikaron)
• Putting on the Sonoma County Israel Fair
• Bringing to our community Speakers and Scholars-in-Residence
• Organizing Seminars on antisemitism and pro-Semitism
Of course, during the pandemic, we could have no in-person events. So, we drew upon the expertise of other communities to offer this year’s Memorial Day observance and Independence Day celebration.
This year, our main accomplishment has been offering a series of six Zoom sessions, “Voices of Israel.”
View the recording of the talks at http://IsraelUpdate.INFO. The topics were varied:
- Cartoons and Zionism talk – “Mr Dry Bones” Yaakov Kirschen
- Understanding Zionism – Charlotte Korchak
- Challenges faced by non-orthodox Jewry in Israel— Rabbi Andrew Sacks, Director of the Masorti [Conservative] Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly in Israel
- Antisemitism for Dummies – Naya Lekht
- Black South African stands with Jews against antisemitism – Olga Meshoe Washington
- Hamas’s war on Israel – Professor Paul Liptz
