Shalom,
The Israel Centre would like to welcome you
to our very first monthly newsletter. Our aim is to keep you informed and inspired
by the events and activities at The Israel Centre. The Israel Centre is your connection
to all things Israel. Israel A-Z, it’s all happening at The Israel Centre!
Contents:
1) Israel Centre News Update
2)
Upcoming Activities
3) Israel – The Good News
4) Website of the Month
Israel Centre News Update
Not a month
goes by without something exciting happening! Instead of winding down as we approach
year end, the Israel Centre is getting busier! We are pleased to announce that
our Israel Encounter Tour is fully booked.
The
Israel Centre hosted an Aliyah Fair from the 7th-12th of November where experts
from Israel came out to answer your Aliyah related questions. Mortgages, education,
employment opportunities – anything you wanted to know and were afraid to
ask was answered. 400 people from JHB and CT took advantage of this great opportunity
reiterating the fact that Israel is home and the first choice of places to live.
What do you get when you combine a group of dynamic,
inspiring, focused youth representing all facets of our community? The National
Shlichim Seminar. Shlichim from all of the Youth Movements congregated at Beyachad
for an intense session on leadership, community, Hasbarah and where focus on future
activities was order of the day. With such a high caliber of young people guiding
our future community leaders, our youth are in good hands!
Upcoming
Activities
The Hatikvah L’Shalom Art & Music Competition.
Are you a budding Marc Chaggall, Annie Liebowitz
or Avni Aharon?
Help us celebrate Israel’s
60th Birthday by expressing the theme, Hatikvah L’Shalom, the Hope for Peace
in one of the following creative ways, through painting, sculpture, sketching
or photography.
Entries open on October the
9th and close on the 1st of March 2008. The competition is open to the entire
community and everyone is welcome! There are no age restrictions and the rule
is to be as creative and inspiring as possible. Entrants are encouraged to include
the following information along with their arts:
Name:
Age:
Email
Address:
Contact Number:
Postal
Address:
A paragraph describing the motivation
behind the entry must be included.
All entries
will be displayed at Beyachad and auctioned off or sold and proceeds will go to
Beit Halochem which looks after and provides rehabilitation for injured soldiers
and victims of terror. Artwork can be handed in to the Hagshama office at Beyachad.
Sing a song of delight!
Help
us celebrate Israel’s 60th Birthday in 2008 by composing the music and lyrics
for a special song. The theme of the song is “Hatikvah L’Shalom: The
Hope for Peace”.
Send your entries on
CD or Cassette with accompanying score to Beyachad, 2 Elray Street Raedene or
email an MP3 (no larger than 4MB) to Lisa@beyachad.co.za Entries close 28 February
2008. Fantastic prizes to be won!
Send your
children to one of the Youth Movements’ Summer Camps this December! Machanaeh
is a fantastic opportunity for young kids to socialize with other Jewish children
and build a strong connection to Zionism and Israel. For more information about
the various camps contact:
Bnei Akiva 011 440 9902
Betar:
011 485 3248
Habonim Dror: 011 786 7046
Netzer
South Africa: 011 646 5543
Israel –
The Good News!
Israeli researchers focus on 'An Inconvenient Truth'
Between
Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth and his recently announced Nobel Peace prize,
world attention is focused on the controversial issue of global warming, much
to the satisfaction of Israeli scientists who have been working in this field
for years. Cloud and precipitation specialist Dr. Ilan Koren and climate change
expert Prof. Pinhas Alpert have been monitoring and evaluating climate change
in the Middle East and the world, and have discovered a clear link between pollution
and climate change. Like Gore, their goal is now to make sure the world sits up
and listens.
Israeli technology guards your
mobile phone identity
You can do almost anything with mobile phones these
days, including financial transactions. That makes securing your mobile phone
with the same stringency as your computer network of the utmost importance. Thanks
to Israel's ClassifEye, mobile phone identity can be secured with a quick snap
of the fingertips. Instead of using costly sensors to read the user's fingerprint,
Class If Eye's technology works with your mobile phone camera: just take a picture
of your finger and the software then authenticates the fingerprint and authorizes
immediate access.
Tafnit program closes
the gap in Israeli schools
For some students, keeping up at school is tough,
but a unique Israeli educational program is turning potential high school dropouts
into academic success stories. Founded in 2001, Tafnit offers Israel's weak students
intensive and fast-paced study outside of school hours to help them catch up with
their peers. The program, established by the Rashi Foundation and supported by
the Education Ministry, encourages students to plan ahead and use their academic
achievements to help them realize their potential. From an initial 2,500 students,
the program now helps more than 20,000 teenagers - some 10 percent of the Israeli
student body.
For more about Israel’s
world leading technologies visit: www.israel21c.org
Website
of the Month
What better way to kick off our series of Newsletters than
with news about the launch of our very own website.
www.israelcentre.org.za
Apart from keeping you up to date about things Israel
Centre related, the site will also help answer those pertinent questions that
you might have regarding Aliyah, opportunities to work or study in Israel and
information about our Hagshama Department, Youth Movements and affiliations with
other organizations such as the JNF (Jewish National Fund), World Zionist Organization
and the Jewish Agency for Israel.
We look
forward to hearing from you! Any ideas or feedback that you would like to share
with us can be sent to hagshama@beyachad.co.za
Kind regards
Ofer and The Israel Centre
Team
Call us: 011 645 2560
Fax us: 011 640 6743
Send us email: israelcentre@beyachad.co.za
