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Anyone trying to understand why Israel does not have a fundraising culture needs to look no further than the tents on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv. I know that the demonstrations are not about charity and non-profit life. But the events of these past weeks offer some vital insights into the future of the Third Sector and philanthropy in Israel.

On the most obvious level, what Israelis are saying is that they simply cannot make ends meet. I don’t know how much American Jews fully grasp the appalling status of Israelis salaries. The average monthly salary in Israel is somewhere in the range of $2000-2500 gross. Even two people working full time with those salaries, with say two or three small children and an average mortgage of $1500-2000 a month, will have a lot of difficulty meeting expenses. The newspapers these past few weeks have been filled with stories of people – highly educated, well-trained, and hard working people holding good jobs – whose living expenses are simply higher than their income. Sure, everyone has different ways to cut costs – moving to a moshav, bicycling to work, no afterschool lessons for the kids, second-hand clothes and books, never going out to eat or even ordering pizza, no cable, no second car, certainly no cleaning help and probably no gym membership, and definitely no family vacations to Europe. Instead, there is a lot of overdraft – some 80% of Israelis are living in overdraft, according to some estimates – and definitely no savings.

Read more at E-Jewish Philanthropy

Part cancer story, part memoir, part kabbalistic manuscript, ‘Soul to Soul’ is a story about death and dying, but actually it’s about life, relationships, suffering and God.

It is so hard to read a book written by someone who has recently died. The words on the page echo her voice, bringing her whole being to life in your head, behind your eyes, inside your ears. You forget for a moment that she is no longer in her body. You mistakenly think she is simply elsewhere, in another spot on the planet, while you are holed away, escaping by yourself with her beautiful narrative.

Maybe she’s not really gone, just far away, your mind toys with you. Memories of conversations you had with her over the years morph in your imagination with the story unfolding in the volume open before you. You sense her presence, filling the room, envisage her sitting in the chair across from you, her soft smile lightening the atmosphere.

And then you look up and realize, no, she really has left. And then the weight of the book in your hands becomes overwhelming.

And you freeze, because you don’t want to turn the page, you don’t want to let go.

Debbie Masel succumbed to cancer in July, shortly after her book was released.

Read more at the Jerusalem Post

The recent arrest of a woman carrying a Torah at the Western Wall is testing already tense relations between the ultra-Orthodox and other Jewish groups over issues of religious pluralism in Israel. It has also prompted accusations that Israel’s national police force is attempting to reinterpret a Supreme Court ruling on women’s prayer at Judaism’s holiest site.

Anat Hoffman, chairwoman of the women’s prayer group Women of the Wall, was detained July 12, as she was leading about 150 worshippers from the Western Wall plaza to Robinson’s Arch, the portion of the Wall where the group is permitted to read from the Torah.

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