Land of Israel

Long before he became the first Israeli to be launched into space, Ilan Ramon, as a 23-year-old fighter pilot, asked Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz: “What is man’s purpose in this world?” Leibowitz did his best to answer

It met in a movie theater, had a really weird assassination attempt, was led by a shockingly diverse coalition, and ended in resignation…

The unbelievable story of how 1,088 (or was it 1,122?) people flew aboard a single airplane as part of 1991’s Operation Solomon

The blockade of Jerusalem began during the first few days of the War of Independence, spreading from the Old City’s Jewish Quarter to the rest of Jerusalem. These color photos from 1948 show us what life was like in the city that was cut off from the rest of the country…

Letters from Edith Gerson-Kiwi, the Grande Dame of Israeli musicology, reveal particular and universal truths about the ‘age-old capital of the world’

Zahara Levitov was a Palmach fighter and among the first women to fly planes in the newly established IDF, but her service was cut short by a tragic crash

The trial of Adolf Eichmann had a profound effect on Holocaust discourse in the young State of Israel. During the trial, a heated debate raged within Israeli society over the appropriate punishment for the senior SS officer…

What Israel’s Independence Day looked like before there was an Independence Day

A lamentation for Nechama, mother of Alec

He swam to Haifa in 1940, unknowingly escaping the ill-fated “Patria”, then spent most of the 1948 war as a POW, saved from death more than once by his Arab Legion captors