Land of My Birth – Rabbi Yehuda Alcharizi was born in 1170. He was the last poet in a long and distinguished line of Jewish poets in Spain, and nobody as great as he rose up afterwards. He had an impressive appearance: He was tall, with white hair and a handsome face. At first, he

Land of My Birth – On the fourteenth of Iyar 5707 (May 4, 1947), the members of the Etzel performed a more daring and sophisticated act than had ever been attempted against the British rulers of the land. They succeeded in breaking into the best protected and most closely watched prison, where the underground fighters

Land of My Birth: David Ben-Gurion, who was not only Prime Minister but also Defense Minister, felt that it was important to show Israel’s strength in military parades. Even in the midst of the War of Independence, only two and a half months after the State of Israel was established, he organized the first parade.

Land of My Birth – The bloody War of Independence had ended (in Adar 5709, 1949), one month before the events to be described below. And for the first time, Pesach, the holiday of freedom, was to be celebrated in the State of Israel. After bitter battles and many who fell, Jerusalem had barely escaped

Land of My Birth – At the end of the First World War (1918), the Zionist movement began to awaken in Damascus. The participants were Hebrew activists who had been expelled from Eretz Yisrael by the Turkish authorities. They established four Hebrew educational facilities in the Syrian capital: a kindergarten, a boys’ school led by the

Land of My Birth – The sixteenth century was the golden era of Tzefat. At the time, this city in the Galil was the home of the majority and the most prominent of the Jews living in Eretz Yisrael. About 1,000 Jewish families lived there, including the greatest rabbis of the time. The most prominent

Land of My Birth – On this very date, the sixth of Adar (Adar I in that year), the great battle was held over the isolated kibbutz, Tirat Tzvi, in the Beit She’an Valley. This was ten years after the first attack on the site, during the riots of 5698 (1938), when the members of