Yoav mom: If my family ever left Israel, we’d head to the Lehigh Valley

By Nurit Galon
Partnership2Gether

Some years ago, Ranni Trainin, the mayor of the Municipality of Yoav, called me, very excited. Ranni had been trying for quite a while to get Yoav involved with the Partnership 2000 program (now known as Partnership2Gether), partnering a Jewish community fr…

Women’s Philanthropy mitzvah group makes mosaic for Israel

By Billy Thompson
Digital Marketing and Graphic Design Associate

The Jewish Federation’s connection to Israel is exemplified in its Partnership2Gether relationship with Israel’s Yoav region. To celebrate this, Women’s Philanthropy gathered to hear Connor Hayes, director of community p…

Yoav artists visiting for week of workshops and bonding

By Carl Zebrowski
Editor

“In every work of art, something divine reveals itself,” said the 20th-century Jewish theologian and philosopher Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. “Art is the partnership between the divine and human in the service of unity.” 

It’s fitting, then, that at thi…

You're just 2 or 3 degrees of separation from a hostage

By Max Averbach
Special to Hakol

In 1980-81, during the Iran hostage crisis, Walter Cronkite, America’s most renowned news anchor, ended every segment of his show, CBS Evening News, with the number of days the hostages had been held captive in Iran. Since October 7, Jewish communities acr…

PBS film will show Valley how Pittsburgh rebounded from Tree of Life attack

By Carl Zebrowski
Editor

First came horror to the Pittsburgh Jewish community, when a gunman entered the Tree of Life synagogue on the Shabbat morning of October 28, 2018. By the time his shooting spree ended, he’d killed 11 and wounded 6. 

Then came hope and resolve.  In the aftermath…