Happy Shavuot! Today we commemorate the day the Torah was revealed by God at Mount Sinai. The Torah mandates the seven-week Counting of the Omer, which begins on the second day o f Passover and ends on Shavuot. The counting of the days between the two holidays expresses the anticipation of escaping from enslavement by Pharaoh in Egypt to receiving the Torah as a free nation in Israel.
This morning, the memorial siren wailed throughout Israel and everyone stopped in their tracks to honor the memory of the victims of the Holocaust on this day, Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day, Yom HaShoah in Hebrew. Today marks 70 years since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, an act of defiance and rebellion, which are the central themes of this year’s Yom HaShoah ceremonies, held at Yad Vashem and other locations that are connected with the survivors of the Holocaust.
Lee Korzits at the World Championship in Brazil (Photo credit: leekorzits.com)
Fifty years ago, a doctor from California introduced Israel to the surfboard. Since then, the country’s coastline along the Mediterranean has been swarmed with surfers of all sorts. Both wind surfing and kite surfing are extremely popular, and tourists visiting Israel can take a lesson on the beaches of Tel Aviv, Eilat or even at the Sea of Galilee.
The next time you’re sitting in traffic you will have wished you turned on Waze. This popular Israeli GPS navigation app has changed the way we drive! On February 26, Waze won the Best Overall Mobile App by the GSM Association in the 2013 Global Mobile Awards at the Barcelona World Mobile Congress. The app beat out top contenders like Dropbox and Flipboard for the number one spot and is just one example of many successful Israeli start-ups.
