Tag Archives: Aliyah

Jew of the Week: Yair Stern

Israel’s Freedom Fighter

Avraham Yair Stern (1907-1942) was born to a Russian-Jewish family in what is today Poland. The family fled during World War I, and Stern ended up living in a small village in Siberia. At 18, he made aliyah on his own to the Holy Land. Stern joined the Haganah defense organization and took up studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1932, he joined the more right-wing Irgun and trained to become an officer. Stern was also a passionate writer and poet. His lyrics were credited with inspiring and strengthening countless Jewish pioneers in Israel. The Hebrew University was so impressed that they sent him to Italy for doctoral studies. Meanwhile, he travelled around Eastern Europe to convince more Jews to make aliyah and join the Zionist movement. Stern quickly recognized the British as oppressors and foreign colonialists, and argued that as the indigenous people of the land Jews had to do whatever it took to reclaim their ancestral home. When the British released the infamous 1939 White Paper limiting Jewish immigration (allowing only 75,000 Jews to enter over five years), Stern concluded that negotiations and diplomacy with the British was no longer possible, and armed resistance was necessary. At the outbreak of World War II, Stern was actually part of a training program with the Polish Army to train 40,000 Jews to liberate Israel from the British! The Nazi invasion of Poland put an end to that program. Stern eventually broke away from the Irgun and formed Lohamei Herut Israel, “Freedom Fighters of Israel”, abbreviated Lehi, in 1940. Some Lehi members sought to recruit local Arabs in their struggle against the British oppressor. But Stern, having lived through the terrible 1929 Hebron massacre and Arab riots (in which over 130 Jews were slaughtered and hundreds more injured and raped), foresaw that the Arabs would never share the land with the Jews in the long-term. Stern went on to organize attacks on British positions and assassinations of British authorities. His group was commonly referred to as “the Stern Gang”. Stern was shot to death by a British policeman in early 1942. Nonetheless, the Stern Gang continued its activities, and even assassinated the antisemitic Lord Moyne, the highest-ranking British official in the Middle East. These events finally convinced the British to abandon the Holy Land for good, allowing the State of Israel to be proclaimed. Immediately after, the new government of Israel disbanded Lehi. In January of 1949, they granted amnesty to past Lehi members, including future Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir. Though he was only 34 years old when he was killed, Yair Stern is credited with playing an instrumental role in the formation of the State of Israel.

Should Jews Celebrate Halloween?

Orthodox Mother of 10 Worked for 12 Hours to Save Partygoers

Why Are Israeli Soldiers Snapping Up Tzitzit?

Bedouin Bus Driver Saves 30 Israelis

Pro-Palestinian Protestors Ignore History and Pay the Price

Thousands of Ultra-Orthodox Israelis Enlist in IDF

Piers Morgan Interviews ‘Son of Hamas

Words of the Week

The current Palestinian political economy, influenced far too greatly by the BDS and anti-normalization campaigns, amounts to a corrupt, unsustainable, terror-supporting regime that is disinterested in the economic well-being of its own people and the development of a new state.
Khaled Abu ToamehArab journalist and filmmaker 

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

Jews of the Week: Aura Herzog and Tova Berlinski

In Memory of Two Great Israeli Women

Aura Ambache (1924-2022) was born in Egypt to a Jewish family of Russian and Polish heritage, that had been expelled from Yafo by the Turks before World War I. Ambache went to French schools in Egypt before heading to South Africa for university studies in math and physics. The family moved back to Israel in 1946 and Ambache joined the Jewish Agency. The following year, she married Chaim Herzog, who would go on to become Israel’s sixth president. Both husband and wife fought in the War of Independence, with Mrs. Herzog serving as an intelligence officer with Unit 8200. She was seriously injured during an attack on the Jewish Agency building. In 1958, she helped organize the first Chidon Tanach, the International Bible Contest, and between 1959 and 1968 was the head of Israel’s Department of Culture. The following year, she founded the Council for a Beautiful Israel, an NGO which works to preserve the environment of the Holy Land and boost the standard of living in the country. Herzog also wrote a book called Secrets of Hospitality. Between 1983 and 1993, she was Israel’s First Lady. Sadly, Herzog passed away last week. Her son Isaac Herzog is the current President of Israel, while son Michael Herzog is Israel’s ambassador to the US.

Tova Gusta Wolf (1915-2022) was born in Oswiecim (Auschwitz), Poland to a Hasidic family, the oldest of six children. She was very active in the Beitar Zionist youth movement and during this time met her husband Eliyahu Berlinski. The young couple decided to make aliyah together in 1938, as soon as they married. (They had to sneak in past British authorities who had then restricted Jewish immigration to the Holy Land.) This prescient move saved their lives. Back in Poland, Tova’s entirely family (except for one sister) would perish in the Holocaust. While originally interested in acting and theatre, the loss of her family inspired her to grieve through painting. Berlinski went on to study at the renowned Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem, and spent time learning with the abstract expressionists in Paris. She won the Jerusalem Prize in 1963 and became one of Israel’s most famous painters. She has been described as the artist who “painted the pain of Auschwitz”. In 2000, she received the Mordechai Ish-Shalom Award for Lifetime Achievement. Sadly, Berlinski passed away earlier this week, aged 106. She had been painting until her last days.

Words of the Week

We need leaders not in love with money but in love with justice. Not in love with publicity but in love with humanity.
– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.