Tag Archives: Israeli

Jew of the Week: Tamar Eshel

In Memory of a Great Israeli Pioneer

Tamar Finkelstein (1920-2022) was born in London, England while her parents worked there for the Jewish Agency. She returned with them to the Holy Land in 1923, at which point the family resettled in Haifa (and also Hebraized their last name to “Shoham”). Tamar Shoham became a youth leader of the Tzofim (Israeli scouts), and later joined the Haganah. For three years, she served as a signal operator and grenade maker. She returned to England to study at the University of London. At the same time, she operated a Haganah radio station and worked in the underground to assist Jews in making aliyah. During World War II, Shoham volunteered to serve in the British Army, and in 1944 was posted as an intelligence officer in Cairo. She returned to Israel in 1948 and took up a position at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There she would meet her second husband, Arye Eshel, who was Israel’s ambassador to Canada. After their wedding in 1960, she went by the name “Tamar Eshel”. Eshel was a frequent delegate to the United Nations, and in 1968 officially became Israel’s UN ambassador. She was appointed by the UN to head its Commission on the Status of Women, becoming the first Israeli in that position. After retiring, Eshel joined Jerusalem’s city council, and later became its deputy mayor. Around the same time, she was elected head of Na’amat, Israel’s largest women’s organization, that still has some 800,000 members today. In 1977, Eshel won a seat on the Knesset, and served as a parliamentarian until 1984. For the rest of her life, she volunteered for Hadassah Medical Center (established by former Jew of the Week Henrietta Szold), and at the Beit Tzipora women’s shelter, which she had co-founded. Eshel passed away last week on her 102nd birthday. She was Israel’s oldest former MK, and one of its most distinguished diplomats.

Words of the Week

The entire Torah was granted solely to bring about peace in the world.
– Rabbi Moses Maimonides (1138-1204), “Rambam”, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Chanukah 4:14

Jew of the Week: Doron Almog

The Commando Heading the Jewish Agency

Almog in 1982

Doron Avrotzky Almog (b. 1951) was born in Rishon LeZion, Israel. He went to a military boarding school and eventually joined the Paratroopers Brigade. He became an officer in 1971, and served as a company commander during the Yom Kippur War, in which his brother Eran lost his life. In 1976, Almog was one of the company leaders of Operation Thunderbolt to save Israeli hostages in Entebbe. In fact, he was the first commando to disembark at the Entebbe airport runway, and led the way to capture the control tower. Almog fought in the 1982 Lebanon War, too, and later commanded Operation Moses to airlift over 7000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel. In 2000, now with the rank of major general, he was appointed to head the IDF Southern Command. Almog had a son with severe disabilities who died young, and a daughter born with a heart defect that ended her life after just a month. Sadly, a devastating suicide bombing in a Haifa restaurant in 2003 took the lives of five more of his family members, and left another severely injured. These horrible tragedies motivated Almog to devote the rest of his life to helping people with disabilities. He retired from the military that same year, and founded the village of Aleh Negev (also called Nahalat Eran, both after his son and fallen brother), a 40-acre rehabilitation and living centre for people with severe disabilities. Today, the village cares for 150 residents, and provides services for another 12,000 patients across Israel. Almog was awarded the Israel Prize in 2016 for lifetime achievement. Last week, he was appointed as the new head of the Jewish Agency. His most pressing task will be settling new Ukrainian and Ethiopian refugees in Israel. In his first speech, he said his mission would be “To reach the heart of every Jew on Earth. To instill pride in our Judaism and the State of Israel, the most important enterprise of the Jewish people since 1948. To instill pride in this one miracle called the State of Israel and its extraordinary achievements in science, technology, culture, agriculture, medicine, society, economy, army, aliyah, and more.”

Words of the Week

“They called me a wiseguy. I won ‘Italian of the Year’ twice in New York, and I’m Jewish, not Italian… I was denied in a country club once.”
– James Caan (1940-2022)

Jew of the Week: Eytan Stibbe

Second Israeli in Space

Eytan Meir Stibbe (b. 1958) was born in Haifa to Jewish parents who had made aliyah from the Netherlands. He grew up partly in the United States. Stibbe joined the Israeli Air Force and became an F-16 fighter pilot. He served under the command of Ilan Ramon, who would go on to become Israel’s first astronaut. Stibbe served with distinction, and once tied a record by shooting down four enemy aircraft in a single battle over Lebanon in 1982. In another mission, he downed a total of five Syrian aircraft! Stibbe was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, and went on to teach at the IAF Flight Academy. Altogether, he served with the Israeli Air Force for some 43 years. Meanwhile, in 1984 he joined Israel Aircraft Industries to help modify and improve Israel’s own Lavi fighter jet. The following year, he co-founded Elar, a new Israeli military tech developer. When he left the company in 2011 and sold all of his shares, he had become a millionaire. Stibbe then turned his attention to his new Vital Capital Fund, which invests specifically in projects designed to alleviate poverty and clean up the environment. The Fund has helped bring sanitation, electricity, and healthcare to millions of people around the world, and has won numerous awards for its philanthropic work. Stibbe has always dreamed of following his mentor Ilan Ramon to space. He purchased a $55 million ticket on board a SpaceX craft, in collaboration with Axiom Space, which took off on April 8th for a ten-day mission. This is the first ever privately-funded human mission to space, and Stibbe is now only the second Israeli ever to go to space. He is not only a passenger, but also doing important scientific work, carrying out a total of 35 experiments, including on space radiation, optics, and quantum communications. Because of several delays, the Rakia mission (from the Biblical Hebrew word for outer space) ended up overlapping with Passover. And so, Stibbe took with him a Pesach seder kit prepared by Chabad, with shmurah matzah and four mini-cartons of grape juice (wine is prohibited on the ISS!) The return trip has also been delayed due to poor weather, and is expected to finally return to Earth this Sunday.

Passover: Fighting for Freedom

Words of the Week

Moses spoke not about freedom but about education. He fixed his vision not on the immediate but on the distant future, and not on adults but children. In so doing he was making a fundamental point: It may be hard to escape from tyranny but it is harder still to build and sustain a free society. In the long run there is only one way of doing so – to defend a country you need an army, but to defend a civilization you need education.
– Rabbi Jonathan Sacks