Jerusalem News (28 December, 2014, 6 Tevet, 5775)
Contents:
1. Study: 22 percent of Israeli Jews identify with religious Zionist camp
2. Chicken Soup for Your Health
Your bubby [Yiddish for grandmother] was right! Scientific studies reveal the medicinal benefits of chicken soup.
by Yvette Alt Miller
3. 'One in three children in Israel is poor,' According to the humanitarian aid organization Latet, an estimated 2.54 million people are living in poverty.
By Lidar Grave-Lazi
4. Meet the Subbotniks - from Russia to Israel
Group of Russian Jews who kept their love for Shabbat, Judaism slowly making its way to Israel.
By Yoni Kempinski, Tova Dvorin
5. 2014 comes to close with 8.3 million Israelis
by Yaron Druckman
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1. Study: 22 percent of Israeli Jews identify with religious Zionist camp
One-third of these say they aren't religious, new study finds; growth of pro-settler camp explains growth of Naftali Bennett's Habayit Hayehudi.
By Yair Ettinger 21:45 27.12.14 ![[]](http://www.haaretz.com/images/icons/comment.png){kind=icon}
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http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/.premium-1.634036?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.216%2C2.218%2C
Extracts:
Twenty-two percent of Jews in Israel consider themselves part of the religious Zionist camp, although one-third of them do not identify as religious at all.
This surprising statistic, one of many in a new study about to be published by the Israel Democracy Institute, can explain the continued rise in the status of the national-religious sector in recent years, particularly in the era of Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, chairman of Habayit Hayehudi, which the polls predict will garner between 15 and 18 Knesset seats in the upcoming election.
The study, led by Prof. Tamar Hermann, was based on interviews on a variety of issues with almost 1,000 people who defined themselves as national-religious (out of 4,600 subjects in the entire study, representative of the Israeli population in general).
The study's results cast doubt on the accepted idea that most of the national-religious community are of the 'knitted skullcap' genre.
Only 49 percent of subjects identifying themselves as national-religious belong to the core group of religous Zionists, national-ultra-Orthodox and liberal Orthodox. The others defined themselves as secular (3 percent), traditional-religious (24 percent), traditional-secular (9 percent) and ultra-Orthodox (11 percent).
These figures are much different and more detailed than those of the Central Bureau of Statistics. According to the latter, 9.9 percent of Israeli Jews define themselves as religious, while 13.6 percent define themselves as traditional religious, and 43 percent as secular.
The dramatic figure of 22 percent defining themselves as national-religious was obtained after reframing a question on this issue. In April 2013, when researchers asked their subjects 'Do you feel part of the Zionist-religious public?' they said they were surprised to discover that 28.7 percent of the Jews responded 'to a great extent' or 'to a very great extent.' They therefore decided to ask the question again in another way: 'To what extent would you say you belong to the national-religious public in terms both of your lifestyle and your views?' to which 22 percent responded that they felt they belonged to a great or a very great extent to this group.
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2. Chicken Soup for Your Health
Your bubby [Yiddish for grandmother] was right! Scientific studies reveal the medicinal benefits of chicken soup.
by Yvette Alt Miller
http://www.aish.com/f/r/Chicken-Soup-for-Your-Health.html
Extracts:
For centuries, chicken soup has been called 'Jewish Penicillin' : a potent remedy for the flu and nasty winter colds. Now research has proved what Jewish cooks have known for centuries: chicken soup contains a myriad of health benefits, from making us feel better when we're sick to helping prevent colds and flu in the first place.
One way chicken soup keeps us healthy is by improving the function of cilia, the tiny little hairs located on the inside our noses, which repel contagions from entering our bodies. Chicken soup also clears up runny noses, reducing the amount of time that viruses spend in contact with the linings of our nasal passageways, and decreasing the likelihood of infection.
Other warm liquids also can help clear a stuffed nose, but there seems to be something special about chicken soup that makes it uniquely effective. Researchers from Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami tested chicken soup against water, dividing a group of volunteers into three categories: they asked one third to take a drink of cold water; one third to drink hot water; and a third drank chicken soup. Those drinking chicken soup experienced the most improvement in congestion.
The biggest chicken soup breakthrough came in 2000, when Dr. Stephen Rennard, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, decided to test his wife's grandmother's chicken soup recipe as a cure for the common cold. He cooked up a batch of the broth, then brought it into his lab for tests. Dr. Rennard found the soup reduced nasal inflammation by preventing the movement of neutrophils, immune system cells that contribute to the body's inflammatory response. White blood cells are important, they're our bodies' defense against viruses, but in nasal passages they cause swelling and irritation, leading to the unpleasant cold symptoms that go along with that, including stuffy heads, coughs and sneezing.
Recently, scientists have identified one crucial compound, carnosine, in chicken soup, which has an added benefit: helping our bodies' Â immune systems fight the early stages of the flu. Carnosine is derived from chicken, and the slow simmering of chicken soup releases this chemical's medicinal value. Scientists warn, though, that carnosine is quickly released from our bodies, so in order to take advantage of the flu-fighting benefits of chicken soup, it's best to drink chicken soup often.
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3. 'One in three children in Israel is poor,' According to the humanitarian aid organization Latet, an estimated 2.54 million people are living in poverty.
By Lidar Grave-Lazi
http://www.jpost.com/landedpages/printarticle.aspx?id=385373
12/22/2014Â Â Â Â
Extracts:
According to the humanitarian aid organization Latet, an estimated 2.54 million people are living in poverty.
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Poverty in Israel is deepening and poor people are finding it increasingly difficult to escape the poverty cycle, according to the Alternative Poverty report published annually by Latet.
According to the findings, there are some 2,546,000 million poor people living in Israel accounting for 31.6% of the population, including, 1,613,000 adults, 29.8%, and 932,000 children, representing 35.1% of the population.
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4. Meet the Subbotniks - from Russia to Israel
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/189145#.VKGQO8PuA
Group of Russian Jews who kept their love for Shabbat, Judaism slowly making its way to Israel.
By Yoni Kempinski, Tova Dvorin
First Publish: 12/26/2014, 9:16 AM
Extracts:
Approximately 20,000 Subbotnik Jews remain in the former Soviet Union, Freund said, and are awaiting the day when they could make Aliyah (immigration) to Israel.
The saga of the Subbotnik Jews began over two centuries ago, when a group of Russian peasants decided to convert to Judaism.
They were forced to pay an extremely heavy price for their choice, including the kidnapping of their children and the forced expulsion of the community by Czar Alexander I to the far reaches of the empire.
Beginning with the Second Aliyah more than a century ago, thousands of them moved to Israel and quickly found their niche in the heart of the pioneering efforts to settle the Land.
Their descendants include prominent figures such as former IDF Chief of Staff Rafael ('Raful') Eitan, former Israel Police District Commander Alec Ron, and of course the legendary Alexander Zaid, who established the Hashomer Jewish self-defense organization.
During World War II, the Nazis murdered thousands of them, and they were subsequently persecuted by the Communists for their beliefs.
Nonetheless, they remained steadfast and refused to abandon Judaism. There are believed to be approximately 20,000 Subbotnik Jews still living in the former Soviet Union. Over the past decade, a large number made Aliyah, especially from the southern Russian villages of Ilyinka and Vysoky, and many of them now live in Beit Shemesh outside of Jerusalem.
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5. 2014 comes to close with 8.3 million Israelis
by Yaron Druckman
Published: 12.29.14, 22:46 / Israel News
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4609199,00.html
Extracts:
At the end of 2014, Israel's population has been estimated at around 8,296,000 residents, out of which 6,218,000 are Jews (74.9 percent of the population), 1,719,000 are Arab (20.7 percent) and 359,000 are defined as "other," the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) said Monday.
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During 2014, some 162,000 people were added to Israel's population, a two percent increase in population, similar to the rate of population growth over the past decade.
Over the past year, some 176,000 babies were born and some 23,000 new olim arrived in Israel.
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