A child looked out as Ultraorthodox Jewish people gathered for a traditional wedding in Bnei Brak, Israel.
A Palestinian construction worker screamed in pain after an Israeli soldier drove a trailer hooked to a tractor over his legs near Yatta, West Bank, Wednesday. Israeli forces seized equipment because they said the workers were building in an unauthorized area.
A Palestinian boy trying to play soccer wiped his face after accidentally crossing through a cloud of tear gas fired by Israeli soldiers toward a group of Palestinian protesters in the West Bank village of Nabi Salah.
Illustrator Tim Enthoven hand-drew all 1,027 Palestinian captives that were exchanged for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit for this week’s cover of The New York Times Magazine.
A teacher taught students how to use a Braille typewriter at the Royal Academy for the Blind in Amman, Jordan, Tuesday. The new academy provides services to more than 150 visually impaired students. More than 30 of its 109 employees are blind.
Palestinian children looked at an Islamic Jihad militant in Beit Lahia in the Gaza Strip on Friday. Israel’s navy boarded two small protest boats trying to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip on Friday and towed them to an Israeli port.
A child held the hand of one of a roomful of nude clay sculptures in ‘Town Square,’ an artwork by Israeli artist Hava Raucher, at the Artists House gallery in Tel Aviv, Israel
After being held captive by the Palestinian group Hamas for five years, Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit returned to his home in Mitzpe Hila, northern Israel. As his family and friends were celebrating his freedom, 477 of an eventual 1,027 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons were released to mass celebrations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, part of the deal with Hamas. Schalit, a tank crewman who is now 25, was captured in June of 2006 near the Gaza border.
(Source: Boston.com)
Photo: Jews from Keifeng, China, pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The group came straight from the airport. (Michael Freund / October 16, 2011)
Descendants of Persian traders in Kaifeng, China, move to Israel with the help of a religious group and finally learn Jewish rules and traditions.
Reporting from Jerusalem and Beijing—As a child growing up in Kaifeng in central China, Jin Jin was constantly reminded of her unusual heritage.
“We weren’t supposed to eat pork, our graves were different from other people, and we had a mezuza on our door,” said the 25-year-old, referring to the prayer scroll affixed to doorways of Jewish homes.
Her father told her of a faraway land called Israel that he said was her rightful home, she recalls. But “we didn’t know anything about daily prayers or the weekly reading of the Torah.”
Jin has since fulfilled her father’s dream. On a hot summer day in Jerusalem, where she works as a tour guide for Chinese citizens visiting Israel, Jin, who now goes by the Hebrew name Yecholya, wore a long khaki skirt, indicative of her conservative religious views, and Teva-like sandals, the national footwear of Israel.
Jin and her relatives belong to a community of Chinese Jews that was established in the 9th century by Persian traders who traveled along the Silk Road to Kaifeng, at the time China’s capital.
Read more: Chinese Jews feel more at home in Israel | LA Times
An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man carried a chicken in one hand and his daughter in the other during Kaparot, where chickens are slaughtered as a symbolic gesture of atonement, in Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighborhood,
Arab Israeli children posed with a pet snake at an amusement park in Acre, Israel, on Wednesday.
A Palestinian demonstrator shouted at Israeli soldiers during a protest at the Qalandia checkpoint between the West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem Friday. Minor clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces erupted there following noon prayers.
