Aaron Leibel's Israel Blog

Aaron Leibel is the author of the acclaimed memoir, Figs and Alligators: An American Immigrant’s Life in Israel in the 1970s and 1980s, to be published by Chickadee Prince Books in March 2021.

It is available to order from Amazon in Kindle and...Read more...

Last week, I discussed the nature of the threat that White supremacists pose to American and other Diaspora Jewish communities in my Jerusalem Post review of Talia Lavin’s  Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy; this week, in my article on Hesh Kestin’s The Wrong Jew:...Read more...

Metaphorically speaking, watch Jewish Renewal Movement leader and political activist Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow go Dancing in God’s Earthquake in my Jerusalem Post review of the book by that name...Read more...

Recently, I participated virtually in a funeral for my oldest daughter Lauren’s father-in-law, which took place in Israel. (Unfortunately, this was my second Zoom funeral. The first, for my brother Gary, took place last April. For that one, I was on the cemetery end of the Zoom camera.)

As I watched Yitzhak Cohen’s children eulogize him, I began to think what unusually good luck my daughters had in finding first-class...Read more...

Teaching American Jewish kids Hebrew in summer camp to make them fluent in the language probably is mission impossible. However, teaching them a few words of the language can have a positive outcome.

See my review of Hebrew Infusion, which appeared in The Jerusalem Post a few...Read more...

It’s every parents’ worst nightmare — a child born with a genetic disease that is almost always fatal. Faced with that reality, author Laurie Strongin and her husband showed almost unbelievable love, courage and determination as they strove to save their son’s life, a story told in Saving Henry: A Mother’s Journey (https://www.jpost.com/magazine/books/healthy-attitudes) that I reviewed for The Jerusalem Post several years...Read more...

An extremely cultured Jewish family, the father was a violist with the Vienna Philharmonic, the mother an opera singer — desperate to escape the hell of Nazi-controlled Vienna — finally get out, landing in a very unlikely spot: La Paz, Bolivia.

How family members adjust to their new, radically different environment is the stuff of this fascinating novel, which I reviewed for The Jerusalem Post earlier this month.

One error...Read more...

I’ve recently read a wonderful book about an authentic American hero — The Luckiest Man, on the life of John McCain.

Author Mark Salter, a top aide and confidant, writes of the horrible torture that McCain endured as a POW in North Vietnam after his fighter/bomber was shot down.

That discussion led me to think about the treatment of captured enemy combatants in Israel. In my book, I write about serving one day as a guard...Read more...

Bonnie is a fiber artist. Walk into our family room almost anytime during the day, and you’re likely to see her knitting or crocheting — no, I don’t know a knit from a crochet — blankets, scarves, hats, even a chuppah (a wedding canopy).  And octopuses.

Yes, for the past three years she has been creating cloth versions of that sea creature to help premature babies cope with their new, scary environments.

Daughter...Read more...

Bonnie is a cat person, and, over the years, her creatures have been nice enough to let the two of us share their homes.

For those not familiar with felines, they’re like dogs, except when a bad guy tries to break into the house, they don’t bark. Instead, they run for cover and stay hidden until the danger has passed.

Don’t misunderstand me, I love our animals — at the present time, it’s Trevor and Glenda — and I...Read more...

In the book, I describe in some detail our weekly trips to the shuk (Mehane Yehuda, the market close to the western entrance to Jerusalem).

As I noted, after Bonnie and I finished there, we lugged our heavy plastic shopping bags laden with fruits and...Read more...

What can the IDF do about a disturbed soldier who wants out? This strange novel, which I reviewed for The Jerusalem Post this summer, tries to answer that question.

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/what-can-the-idf-do-when-a-soldier-cannot-handle-the-stress-635159 

https://audere.chickadeeprince.com/2020/09/24/veteran-journalist-aaron-leibel-revisits-israels-past-and-his-own/

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In the Diaspora, the subject kashrut — keeping kosher — is relatively simple. All Orthodox, some very traditional Conservative (such as at my synagogue, Har Tzeon-Agudath Achim in Silver Spring, Md.) and a few Reform Jews adhere to the dietary laws. (A few non-Jews, believing that kosher food is somehow cleaner or more healthy, eat food with kosher certifications, but, of course, keeping kosher is much more involved than just that. Eating...Read more...

If you are familiar with Israel, I almost will be able to hear you say, "Yeah, that's Israel, alright" when you finish reading this post.

Every year, when my wife and I visit our family in the Jewish state, we have a "yom Leibel," Leibel day, when the sons-in-law and the grandchildren are left at home and the daughters, Bonnie and I do something together.

A few years ago, we were visiting some of the spots in Jerusalem that...Read more...