Jerusalem News, .20 November 2022; 26 Cheshvan, 5783.
2. 6 Ways Jews Shaped Thanksgiving
3. Three out of four post-Soviet immigrants in 2020 weren't Jewish, data show
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1. Israel blasts Ukraine for begging for arms while supporting UN criminalization of Israeli 'occupation'
November 13, 2022
https://worldisraelnews.com/israel-blasts-ukraine-for-begging-for-arms-while-supporting-un-criminalization-of-israel-occupation/?
Ukraine's support for the resolution comes as Kyiv continues to press Jerusalem to transfer the Iron Dome missile defense system and other weapons to Ukraine.
By World Israel News Staff
Israel condemned Ukraine's decision to vote in favor of an anti-Israel resolution at the United Nations last Friday, as Kyiv continues to pressure the Jewish state to provide it with advanced weaponry.
On Friday, Israeli ambassador to Ukraine, Michael Brodsky, took Kyiv to task after the Ukrainian delegation to the United Nations voted in favor of a draft resolution in the General Assembly's Special Political and Decolonization Committee backed by the Palestinian Authority's delegation.
Brodsky took to Twitter shortly after the vote, calling Ukraine out over its U.N. vote.
'Ukraine's support of the UN resolution 'Israeli Practices', denying Jewish ties to Temple Mount and calling for ICJ advisory opinion is extremely disappointing. Supporting anti Israeli initiatives in the UN doesn't help to build trust between Israel and Ukraine,' Brodsky tweeted.
The countries that voted with Israel in opposing the resolution were Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Guatemala, Hungary, Italy, Liberia, Lithuania, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and the United States.
The United Kingdom and France abstained.
All of the Arab states, including Israel's new allies Bahrain and UAE, approved the anti-Israel measure, along with both Ukraine and Russia.
The draft resolution, entitled 'Israeli practices and settlement activities affecting the rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the occupied territories,' claims Israel has violated 'Palestinian rights' to self-determination 'from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the holy city of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures.'
Ukraine's support for the resolution comes as Kyiv continues to press Jerusalem to transfer the Iron Dome missile defense system and other weapons to Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government has thus far refused Israeli offers for a civilian missile alert warning system.
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2. 6 Ways Jews Shaped Thanksgiving
https://aish.com/6-ways-jews-shaped-thanksgiving/?acid=59394853cfa547d9bb96daca074f0d88&src=ac-txt
by Dr. Yvette Alt Miller
Extracts:
1. Modeling the first Thanksgiving on Sukkot
At harvest time, the Pilgrims declared a three-day long feast of Thanksgiving to thank God for their harvest. Deeply religious Christians, the Pilgrims were well acquainted with the Hebrew Bible and Jewish holidays, including the autumn festival of Sukkot, when Jewish pilgrims brought offerings from their harvests to the Temple in Jerusalem. Some see the first American Thanksgiving was an attempt to thank God for His beneficence in a new place, and to a new set of Pilgrims, a conscious imitation of Sukkot.
Pilgrim leader William Bradford had another Jewish custom in mind when he declared a service of thanksgiving soon after the Pilgrims made landfall in 1620. He opened his Bible and led the Pilgrims in reciting Psalm 107. Incredibly, the annotations in Bradford's Bible, written by the English clergyman Henry Ainsworth, quoted the Medieval Jewish sage Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon (Rambam), whose legal work the Mishnah Torah directs Jews to recite a prayer based on Psalm 107 after making a dangerous journey and overcoming other obstacles.
2. Ensuring Jews Can Celebrate Thanksgiving
Many of [Synagoge] Shearith Israel's members joined the Continental Army and fought with George Washington; approximately 20 members of the synagogue died in America's revolutionary war. After the war, Seixas was selected to be one of the small number of clergy people present at George Washington's presidential inauguration. When the new President declared a national day of Thanksgiving for the new United States in 1789, he specifically made his day of thanks non-denominational, ensuring that his Jewish supporters could fully take part in America's first national thanksgiving festival.
3. The Shavuot Connection
Thanksgiving only became a regular, annual holiday in 1863. That was thanks in large part to one woman: Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of America's most popular journal, Godey's Ladies Journal. ... she called for a day of Thanksgiving in which all Americans, including Jews, could take part. .. "The noble annual feast day of our Thanksgiving resembles, in some respects, the Feast of Pentecost, which was, in fact, the yearly season of Thanksgiving with the Jews," Hale insisted in the pages of her magazine, year after year.
4. The Jew Who Changed the Date of Thanksgiving
American retailers lobbied President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to bring Thanksgiving forward a week, to November 23, to help America�s embattled retailers. The leader of the push was Fred Lazarus, Jr., the Jewish chairman of the Federated Department Stores, a national retailing grouping he'd organized in 1930 to link stores in different communities by sharing a financial base. (Federated Department Stores eventually became Macy's.) ...
Pres. Roosevelt changed Thanksgiving back to its original date in 1941.
5. Inventing Thanksgiving Day Parade
No Thanksgiving would be complete without watching a Thanksgiving Day Parade, a tradition started by the descendants and business partners of a Jewish immigrant named Adam Gimbel.
... In 1920, Bernard Gimbel, Adam's grandson, held the first Thanksgiving Day Parade... Macy's in New York started their own Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924, in a clear imitation of Gimbels.
6. Creating America's Green Bean Casserole.
The iconic green bean casserole topped with crunchy fried onions that many Americans enjoy on Thanksgiving .... was popularized in the 1950s by the Jewish food writer Cecily Brownstone.
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3. Three out of four post-Soviet immigrants in 2020 weren't Jewish, data show
Report comes after leaders of emerging right-wing government expressed intention to amend sensitive Law of Return and reopen question of who counts as Jewish in the eyes of the state
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/r1plow7ii
Almost three out of four people who immigrated to Israel from post-Soviet states under the Law of Return in 2020 were not Jewish, new data published Wednesday by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) shows.
The Law of Return allows Jews, their immediate family, and grandchildren to attain Israeli citizenship.
The Knesset's Research and Information Center tabled a comprehensive report on immigration from post-Soviet countries since the fall of the USSR in the early 1990s after the leaders of the emerging right-wing government expressed their intention to amend the sensitive law and reopen the question of who counts as Jewish in the eyes of the State of Israel.
CBS data show that over three decades the percentage of Jews among immigrants dropped steadily, from 93% in 1990 to only 28% in 2020.
A total of 1,124,822 people immigrated to Israel during that period - 64% of them Jewish according to Jewish law, that is, either born to a Jewish mother or converted to Judaism.
The number of non-Jewish immigrants was 402,797, and together with their descendants born in Israel, and excluding those who have passed away in the meantime or left Israel, the number of non-religious immigrants and ex-Soviet citizens in Israel stands at about half a million people.