Tag Archives: Jerusalem

Jew of the Week: Rami Levy

Israeli Supermarket King and Palestinian Hero

Rami Levy (b. 1955) was born in Jerusalem to an impoverished Iraqi-Jewish family. After completing his military service, he took over his grandfather’s failing grocery stall at the local market. He decided to slash his prices and sell without profit for the first three months to attract customers. After that, he continued operating at wholesale prices, becoming Israel’s first official discount store. A few years later, he was able to open a bigger, second location, and in 1992 his first supermarket, Rami Levy Shivuk HaShikma, named after himself and the street where his first shop was located. He has since expanded to 44 locations across Israel. He also operates 4 locations in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) that, despite being boycotted by the Palestinian Authority, employ Palestinian workers at double the wages of other supermarkets in the area, and are hugely popular among Palestinian shoppers who appreciate the low prices. More recently, he opened a shopping mall on the outskirts of Jerusalem, where a third of the stores are Palestinian-owned. Rami Levy has supported Jewish settlements in the area and does not see them as a barrier to peace, because he strongly believes Jews and Arabs can coexist no matter where they live, and peace can be achieved through Palestinian economic development. He has been described as “the Israeli supermarket king that became a Palestinian hero”. Today, Rami Levy supermarkets are famous for their clever marketing and epic pre-holiday sales (for example, chickens, apples, and honey for less than a shekel per kilo before one Rosh Hashanah). The company went public in 2007, and has since expanded into clothing, real estate, and cellular communications, becoming Israel’s fourth mobile network. They are even trying to develop a home-delivery system using drones. Rami Levy Shivuk HaShikma is now the third largest supermarket chain in the country.

Recognizing and Fighting Fake News About Israel

Words of the Week

The state and progress of the Jews, from their earliest history to the present time, has been so entirely out of the ordinary course of human affairs, is it not then a fair conclusion, that the cause also is an extraordinary one—in other words, that it is the effect of some great providential plan?
– Alexander Hamilton

Jew of the Week: Josephus

Greatest Jewish Historian

An 1817 depiction of Josephus

Yosef ben Matityahu (c. 37-100 CE) was born in Jerusalem to a wealthy family of kohanim descended from the Maccabees. As a young man, he explored various philosophies and schools of thought, ultimately resolving to become a Pharisee and live a Torah-observant life. He traveled to Rome as part of a delegation to free Jewish captives. When the First Jewish-Roman War (or “Great Revolt”) broke out, Yosef was appointed military commander of the Galilee region. After several initial successes, he lost to the Romans during the siege on Yodfat. Pigeon-holed in a cave with 40 other soldiers, the group resolved to commit suicide rather than surrender. As Yosef would later write, the other soldiers all killed each other to avoid capture, but he chickened out and gave himself up to the Romans. He offered to be useful to the Roman general Vespasian (soon to become Caesar) and helped him navigate the Judean terrain. He also served as his translator and negotiator. After the war ended (with the destruction of Jerusalem’s Holy Temple), he settled in Rome, was granted Roman citizenship, and continued to work for the new Flavian Dynasty, taking on the name “Flavius Josephus”. For this treachery, Josephus was never looked well upon by Jews. Nonetheless, he spent much of his remaining years writing extensively about Jews and Judaism, dispeling myths about the mysterious people, and helping to portray them more positively. Today, Josephus’ works are a wealth of knowledge for historians and Jewish scholars. They provide eye-witness accounts of the Great Revolt, and a detailed explanation of Jewish life at the end of the Second Temple era, as well as a treasure trove of information about the Roman Empire. Though he did not mention Jesus, his writings have been used extensively by Christian scholars to understand the context in which Christianity emerged. His work has also been used extensively by archaeologists to make sense of ancient finds in Israel, most notably at Masada, and even to discover the tomb of King Herod. Among his books are Antiquities of the Jews, Wars of the Jews, and Against Apion, which was a defense of Judaism debunking the claims of the antisemitic Greek writer Apion Mochthos. Today, Josephus’ works are considered among the most important historical texts of all time.

Tisha b’Av Begins Tonight, Have a Meaningful Fast!

What is the Meaning of Tisha b’Av?

Why Was Jerusalem’s Holy Temple Really Destroyed?

Words of the Week

Should anyone of our nation be asked about our laws, he will repeat them as readily as his own name. The result of our thorough education in our laws from the very dawn of intelligence is that they are, as it were, engraved on our souls.
– Josephus

Jews of the Week: Belkinds and Hankins

Israel’s Great Pioneers

Israel Belkind (1861-1929) was born near Minsk, Belarus. After a Hebrew elementary school education, he enrolled at a Russian gymnasium and planned to study in university. However, the terrible 1881 pogroms turned him into a passionate Zionist, and the rest of his life was dedicated to saving the plight of diaspora Jews. He founded an organization called BILU (an acronym of Beit Yaakov Lechu v’Nelcha, from an End of Days prophecy in Isaiah 2:5, where the Biblical prophet encourages Jews to get up and take possession of their land). In the summer of 1882, Belkind led the first group of Biluim to the Holy Land. After several years of working on Jewish agricultural settlements, he decided to focus on education instead. He taught at a school in Jaffa, and then in Jerusalem. In 1904, Belkind started his own school for children orphaned by the devastating Kishinev Pogrom. Meanwhile, Belkind wrote several important Zionist texts, and was also a noted anthropologist. Intriguingly, he did a great deal of research among the local Arab population and came to the conclusion that they must be the descendants of Jews who had been forcibly converted to Islam! He noted how the locals did not even refer to themselves as “Arabs”, but only “Muslims” (they called the Bedouins “Arabs”), and many of them knew about their Hebrew ancestors. They had various customs that resembled Jewish ones, used an Arabic dialect peppered with old Jewish terms, and venerated the same Biblical figures as the Jews. His dream was thus to open Hebrew schools for the Palestinians, and slowly return them to the Jewish fold. (Later, thanks to the opportunities created by the Zionist movement, a massive influx of non-indigenous Arab immigrants came from neighbouring areas, particularly Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon.)

Yehoshua and Olga Hankin in 1910

Belkind’s older sister was Olga Hankin (1852-1943). She studied in St. Petersburg to become a midwife. Olga joined her brother in the Holy Land during the First Aliyah of 1886, making her the first professional midwife in the region. She soon became the most famous midwife in the land, and was sought out by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. She made a name for herself as being the only woman to ride alone on horseback—even at night—and became something of a feminist icon. Olga married Yehoshua Hankin (1864-1945), originally from Russia. Hankin was well-respected by local Arabs, and was able to negotiate a purchase of a massive plot of land on behalf of the Zionist movement in 1890. This land became what is today the city of Rehovot, a name proposed by Israel Belkind based on a verse in Genesis. In 1891, using donations from diaspora Jews, the Hankins purchased what is today Hadera (the neighbourhood of Givat Olga in Hadera is named after Olga Hankin). In 1908, Yehoshua Hankin joined the Palestine Land Development Company and became its number-one real estate agent in the Holy Land. His most famous deal was the Sursock Purchase, acquiring Haifa Bay and the Jezreel Valley from the Sursocks (an Orthodox Christian family who had purchased the land from the Ottomans decades earlier). Hankin’s work secured hundreds of thousands of dunams of land for the Jewish cause, and he is credited with being the top negotiator of land purchases in Israel’s history.

Understanding the Arab-Israeli Conflict in 5 Easy Points

The Incredible Story of the “Mensch of Malden Mills”

Words of the Week

We are worth what we are willing to share with others.
Sir Moses Montefiore