Sam Sokol
By Sam Sokol
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News Meet the Black-Jewish American para-athlete teaching Arabs and Jews to play together
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, closing down life across large swathes of the country, 27-year old Jovan Booker, an African-American para-athlete, decided to pick up and fly to Israel to coach youth basketball. In many ways, it was a natural move for the young graduate student at Hofstra University who, despite always…
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Israel News Experts dismiss Israeli drive to vaccinate world’s Holocaust survivors as political stunt
An Israeli cabinet minister’s plan to vaccinate all 320,000 of the world’s remaining Holocaust survivors immediately drew harsh criticism from survivor advocates, former diplomats and public health experts, who accused her of floating the monumental effort to boost her political profile ahead of the country’s upcoming parliamentary election. The Shalom Corps, a non-profit jointly owned…
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News Marvin And Zippora Hyman, 92 And 75, Travel Lovers Married For 49 Years
(JTA) — Marvin and Zippora Hyman were married for nearly half a century and as inseparable in life as they were in death. The couple died of COVID-19 within 24 hours of each other. Marvin died on March 29 at 92. Zippora died the following day at 75. A retired airplane mechanic, Marvin came down…
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Israel News Can diaspora Jews visit Israel during the COVID-19 crisis?
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Like many French Jews, Agnes Mimoun used to take her ability to freely travel to Israel for granted. Getting here was as easy as booking a ticket online and grabbing a cab to Charles de Gaulle Airport for the 4 1/2-hour flight to Tel Aviv. But for the past month, this mother…
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Israel News Meet the team working to translate Rav Kook into Arabic
Jews and Arabs in Israel live in two separate worlds. Even as they walk side by side on the street, members of each group are usually confined to their own linguistic, religious and cultural spheres, which rarely overlap. But a Jewish activist in Jerusalem is trying to change that by launching a project to introduce…
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Israel News Inspired by Black Lives Matter, Israelis protest police brutality
Israeli police were caught on camera earlier this month brutally beating 24-year old David Biton over a face mask. In a jerky, low-resolution cellphone video shared widely over the internet, Biton, who had been stopped for failing to adhere to the country’s social distancing regulations, could be seen laying on the ground crying out in…
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News The Agony Of The COVID-19 Obituarist
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The sobs came over the phone as Michael Beer described his father Ira’s lifelong commitment to Torah study and his family. A victim of the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people across the world, Ira Beer had come to my attention during the course of my work on…
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Israel News As deadline passes, West Bank settlers say no rush on annexation
NEVE DANIEL — On Wednesday, Israeli Regional Cooperation Minister Ofir Akunis announced that Jerusalem was punting on annexation, delaying an expected announcement on integrating as-of-yet undefined portions of the disputed West Bank into Israel proper. Declaring that a decision would still likely be announced within the month, his statement extended a period of political and…
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