Chaim Weizmann

WUJS participants represented 36 different countries from around the world. (Photo credit: Dana Levinson Steiner)

January 4, 2018, 10:30 am

In Jerusalem, a 94-year-old World Jewish Student Congress rediscovers its voice

The organization that once boasted members such as Freud, Einstein and Chaim Weizmann has fallen into debt and off the world stage. A group of new leaders hopes to change that

By Tracy Frydberg

From left, Lords Edmund Allenby, Arthur Balfour and Sir Herbert Samuel, at Hebrew University in 1925. (Library of Congress)

November 1, 2017, 2:46 pm

Balfour Declaration: A century old and as disputed as ever

Researchers at the Shalom Hartman Institute dive into what the media is and isn’t saying about the British letter’s meaning and impact upon its 100th anniversary

By Alan D. Abbey and Benjamin Emmerich

Then-British Home Secretary Winston Churchill on a visit to the British Mandate of Palestine in March 1921, nearly three decades before it became the Jewish state. (Churchill Museum)

November 1, 2017, 11:03 am

Ahead of Balfour 100, UK enshrines Churchill’s headstrong case for Israel

A new permanent exhibition highlights the British PM’s unflinching support for the Jewish state — even under heavy pressure from his government

By Robert Philpot

Sara Aaronsohn, one of the founders of the pre-British Mandate Palestine espionage ring NILI. (Public domain)

December 14, 2016, 10:29 am

With spy Sarah Aaronsohn’s suicide, Israeli history was rewritten, claims author

In 1915, the Aaronsohn siblings founded an espionage group in their village of Zichron Yaakov to help the Brits defeat the Turks. Outside of Israel, why was their tale whitewashed from history?

By JP O’ Malley

Mithqal al-Fayez, painted for the family from a 1920s black and white photo. (Courtesy)

September 3, 2016, 4:49 pm

How Jordan’s ‘sheikh of sheikhs’ negotiated with Zionists, founded a kingdom

Israeli pens first biography of Mithqal al-Fayiz, the tribal leader who put the Hashemites on the Jordanian throne — a Lawrence of Arabia-esque epic about a desert nomad

By Dov Lieber

In this screenshot, Chaim Weizmann cuts a tape to symbolize his official entrance into Jerusalem for his inauguration as president (Photo courtesy AP)

September 11, 2015, 10:09 pm

Weizmann, Churchill and ‘British Schindler’ were on Nazi hit list

Nazis singled out over 2,800 Britons, among them many Jews and anti-fascists, for punishment had Germany conquered the UK in WWII

By TOI staff

Israeli youth participate a mass chemistry experiment at Tel-Aviv University last year (Photo credit: Gili Yaari/Flash90)

From the WebNovember 20, 2012, 1:05 am

Process invented a century ago by Chaim Weizmann could power modern cars

Berkeley News Center: A long-abandoned fermentation process discovered by Israel’s first president during WWI could eventually replace fossil fuels at the gas pump

The original Hebrew University buildings (photo credit: Shmuel Bar-Am)

November 9, 2012, 4:50 pm

History on high at Mount Scopus

A thank you gift from the Jews to Lord Balfour, the cemetery hilltop 834 meters above sea level has been a command post, a danger-zone, a world-class medical facility, and a fount of Hebrew knowledge

By Aviva and Shmuel Bar-Am

Polish-born violinist Bronislaw Huberman saved dozens of musicians and hundreds of their family members from the Holocaust while creating what would become the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. (Photo credit: Courtesy of the Felicja Blumenthal Music Center Library/Huberman Archive via First Run Features)

October 26, 2012, 5:33 pm

How Europe’s top violinist saved hundreds from Hitler to build an ‘orchestra of exiles’

A documentary opening in New York Friday explores the extraordinary but little-known story of Bronislaw Huberman, the heroic, self-effacing ‘Jewish Schindler’ who created the Israel Philharmonic

By Matt Lebovic

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (photo credit: Amit Shabi/Flash90)

October 22, 2012, 8:01 pm

In Netanyahu’s Iran dilemma, echoes of an old debate about the power of words

The PM, who highlighted his success in putting Iran on the global agenda in his first campaign speech last week, believes reality is shaped by what is said. In this, he is a direct descendant of Jabotinsky and Begin

By Mitch Ginsburg

Influential medical illustrations by German-Jewish doctor Fritz Kahn imagined the human body as an industrial machine. (Photo credit: fritz-kahn.com)

October 10, 2012, 12:48 pm

For German-Jewish doctor, overdue attention for the ‘body’ of his work

Museums in Berlin, New York and London help the public rediscover influential illustrations by Fritz Kahn, an innovator who merged medicine with the industrial age

By Graham Lawson

President Shimon Peres, right, announced the winners of the first Presidential Award of Distinction earlier this year. Left is former president Yitzhak Navon (photo credit: Uri Lenz/Flash90)

August 21, 2012, 1:27 pm

Did Shimon ‘we can’t go it alone on Iran’ Peres shatter presidents’ precedent?

Israel’s head of state has been slammed for opposing the PM’s Iran plan. But not all presidents have been content with shaking hands and giving out medals

By Raphael Ahren

Lionel Nathan de Rothschild (1808–1879) introduced in the House of Commons on 26 July 1858 by Lord John Russell and Mr. Abel Smith. (photo credit: painter Henry Barraud (1811–1874), public domain, wikipedia)

April 16, 2012, 7:22 am

Friends in high places

A new book claims philosemitism in the British Isles is the basis of the Jewish state

By Michael M. Rosen

April 4, 2012, 11:39 am

Daniel Allen

Four questions for four Zionists

Why, on this night, are we not working more diligently to assist Israel in achieving its stated goals of equality for all her citizens, to build a more inclusive democratic society and peace with all her neighbors?