יום שלישי, כ״ח אב תשפ״וTuesday, August 11, 2026
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Rhona Lewis made aliyah more than 20 years ago from Kenya and is now living in Beit Shemesh. A writer and journalist who contributes frequently to The Jewish Press’s Olam Yehudi magazine, she divides her time between her family and her work.
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By Rhona Lewis
My physical self has limits, but my true essence, my inner thinking process has no limits.
By Rhona Lewis
Suddenly, more than eight hundred years fall away and the legacy of the Rambam comes to life.
By Rhona Lewis
My musical performances are interactive. I take my audience with me on a journey to their inner selves.
By Rhona Lewis
We were split up among the villagers because the Germans were on the lookout and it was too risky for anyone to hide four of us together.
By Rhona Lewis
In recent years, Shavei Israel has facilitated the immigration and absorption of 3,500 Bnei Menashe Jews from India.
By Rhona Lewis
My quest for knowledge became life-changing. Like a bat (I didn’t mind the negativity associated with the flying mammals – I’m short-sighted anyway so there was a ring of truth to the simile), I honed in on the answers I’d been searching for.
By Rhona Lewis
We connect to others by communicating with them. When the ability to communicate is lost, we lose that connection.
By Rhona Lewis
I didn't include my height in my CV, because my family had always taught me that dwarfism is a non-issue. Some people are short; others are tall.
By Rhona Lewis
We're powered by a mixture of inner joy and adrenaline and the audience is able to tap into these positive feelings.
By Rhona Lewis
Although I may not speak as clearly as other social workers, my clients understand me better than them. And that’s because I understand them.
By Rhona Lewis
As the political situation in the neighboring Arab countries grew more precarious, Jews from Iran, Iraq and Syria began making their way to Lebanon.
By Rhona Lewis
“How? How do you go on? You have to,” she says with a simplicity that hides more than it reveals.
By Rhona Lewis
I wanted to try and begin to understand the unfathomable: How did such evil come about?
By Rhona Lewis
Women in the eighteen- to fifty-year-old age bracket are more susceptible to melanomas than are men.
By Rhona Lewis
Only after Perrie has extracted my entire family history does she begin to share her own story.
By Rhona Lewis
Kfar Kedem offers a variety of activies to serve as a link between the past and the present.
By Rhona Lewis
Breslov chassidus is well-known for its focus on hisbodedus, solitary contemplation. For Yehoshua this means sometimes going into the forest to paint.
By Rhona Lewis
In July 2009, when the IAA began a five-month excavation at Magdala, it didn’t expect to find much… until, right beneath a wing of the proposed guesthouse, the top of a buried wall was discovered.
By Rhona Lewis
I had no control over what happened to me that day, but I do have control over how I live my life going forward.
By Rhona Lewis
Rarely successful in the classroom, Simcha used his brilliant mind to teach himself anything he was interested in.
By Rhona Lewis
I am done with my little bit of research and I marvel. Not so very long ago Muslim Arabs were willing to risk their lives to save Jews.
By Rhona Lewis
We are opening doors for the students. Telling them to look at the world they didn't know about and asking them to think about it.
By Rhona Lewis
If things go well, Souza can paint a portrait in an hour to an hour and a half.
By Rhona Lewis
In times of crisis people often turn to their rabbis for help, but that isn't necessarily the right address.
By Rhona Lewis
After seventy years of silence, for the first time, we are actually hearing songs sung by those subjected to unspeakable cruelty.
By Rhona Lewis
Being in prison was hard, but I'm grateful for it because it saved my life.
By Rhona Lewis
As a Jew in Yemen, you live in your own little bubble and don't associate with the world around you.
By Rhona Lewis
Harel specializes in oil paints, etching, wood-cut, silk-print and lithography. He also specializes in details that surprise.
By Rhona Lewis
A human being is defined by his ability to choose. When you're in jail, choice is taken away from you.
By Rhona Lewis
So what did it really feel like – back there in Canaan? The cast traveled to Eretz Bereishit, an activity center twenty minutes outside Jerusalem, to learn about that.
By Rhona Lewis
Another fact that participants need to deal with is that in so many cases little remains to bear witness to the horrors that took place.
By Rhona Lewis
Determined, he chose to make his life a success.
By Rhona Lewis
With their skills in finance and trade, and the network they naturally shared with European Jews, they played an important economic role in the sugar trade and the shipping industry.
By Rhona Lewis
These many heroes and heroines gave Israel their hears.
By Rhona Lewis
They are trained to show all potential converts tremendous love and compassion. It's all part of their strategy.
By Rhona Lewis
“No Asylum,” which documents the tragic consequences of intolerance and racism, was the next step in Fouce’s fight against prejudice.
By Rhona Lewis
"I'm not trying to build another congregation. I'm simply helping people find the niche that's right for them."
By Rhona Lewis
I told my friend "Every Israeli needs a therapist. She said "we don’t need shrinks. We need emunah"
By Rhona Lewis
Yuval went on to produce more than ten film documentaries aimed at exposing secular audiences to Judaism and spirituality.
By Rhona Lewis
The Red Orchestra was made up of three different units. The Trepper unit was based in Germany, France and Belgium.
By Rhona Lewis
“I responded, 'I will be among this handful surviving.'”
By Rhona Lewis
Upon meeting the Zionist delegation, General Wu, a recent convert to Christianity, said, “You are my spiritual brothers.
By Rhona Lewis
On an ice-cold night in 1942, while taking part in a demanding Palmach training course in Juara in north Israel, Chaviva Reich made the treacherous descent to kibbutz Ein Hashofet to bring back some grapes for her colleagues and raise their morale. She was caught by a kibbutz guard, the grapes were confiscated, and she […]
By Rhona Lewis
Anna Henriques, who hopes to one day head back to Jamaica, says, “Rabbi Raskin must be willing to respect what exists in Jamaica. The way to the future is to gently bring in the traditions of the past and at the same time embrace the idiosyncrasies of the Jamaican people.”
By Rhona Lewis
With the danger of being discovered always a possibility, the partisans not only moved around in the forest, but also eliminated any collaborators.
By Rhona Lewis
HonestReporting's missions attract a wide gamut of participants, 15% of whom are not Jewish.
By Rhona Lewis
"Spot On,” our semi-regular feature on off-the-beaten-track places in Israel, takes us to the Golan
By Rhona Lewis
Commenting on the public’s growing acceptance of challenged individuals, Dr. Hahn says, “Little by little, things are changing.
By Rhona Lewis
Although it's emotionally difficult to see the suffering, helping out makes me happy.
By Rhona Lewis
During the Second World War, a million and a half Jewish soldiers fought in the Allied armies, the Partisan units in Eastern Europe, and the anti-fascist underground movements in Western Europe and North Africa. These Jewish fighters won over 200,000 medals and citations. The Museum of the Jewish Soldier in World War II in Latrun, […]
By Rhona Lewis
Jews integrated into life in Kenya to such an extent that in 1955, Israel Somen, who had worked extensively on the Lunatic Line (the colloquial name for the railway that was forged madly through forests and ravines, troops of tribesmen and lions) was elected the mayor of Nairobi.
By Rhona Lewis
Shepherding in the Shomron isn’t your usual kind of shepherding – despite his business-minded beginnings, Eli has discovered that a strong ideological impetus powers the job.
By Rhona Lewis
"I aim for the heart," says Dvorah, "and I start with feelings, because feelings are universal."
By Rhona Lewis
The gaping hole torn in my heart by my son's death was too raw to find solace in any of the memorial events planned by others.
By Rhona Lewis
"Addiction can be managed, but it isn't something that can be cured."
By Rhona Lewis
"My husband, the visionary, wanted to target people who had never kept Shabbos; I, the realist, asked how they would do it."
By Rhona Lewis
Keeping my hands on my head, I looked up to see four or five balls of fire exploding in the sky.
By Rhona Lewis
"We don't just care for the children; we make sure they have the best quality of life."
By Rhona Lewis
When charedi women traveled to the bedsides of wounded soldiers and the homes of fallen soldiers in the months of July and August as Operation Tzuk Eitan (Protective Edge) progressed, their trepidation was very real. In Israel, charedim and the army is a sensitive issue. Would their visit be viewed with cynicism or would it be welcomed?
By Rhona Lewis
I couldn't see why I was different from Israeli boys my age. I too wanted to defend our country.
By Rhona Lewis
Our harps have 22 strings. This gives musicians a wide musical range and yet stays within Biblical parameters.
By Rhona Lewis
When you don't have anyone else to turn to... that's when you're tied to Hashem the closest.
By Rhona Lewis
In Uzbekistan, in the early twentieth century, it was the women who wore the pants.
By Rhona Lewis
I probe a little deeper and Shula takes me into the world of phantom pains and prosthetic limbs.
By Rhona Lewis
"I didn't choose the landscape; it chose me."
By Rhona Lewis
The traditional services that take place here transport visitors back in time, enabling them to smell and feel the authentic historical experience.
By Rhona Lewis
Sleepily, I watched him kissing Mai's chubby thighs.
By Rhona Lewis
Temech is about providing a community – a place where religious women can learn, collaborate and refresh themselves with like-minded people.
By Rhona Lewis
A woman who knows that her family is financially stable is a happy, relaxed mother.
By Rhona Lewis
How does Ami cope with being drawn into the maelstrom of pain that victims of terror live with?
By Rhona Lewis
Roni Tzur, a counselor with OneFamily, explains that Sara “is mourning a mother who is actually alive."
By Rhona Lewis
OneFamily’s support naturally extends to the families of terror victims.
By Rhona Lewis
Who are the heroes who rush into a hell like this and pull out the wounded and the dead?
By Rhona Lewis
Like mushrooms, shuls of all shapes and sizes are popping up throughout Israel in places where the residents vowed no sign of traditional Judaism would ever find a place. However, unlike mushrooms, which appear overnight with little effort, these shuls are being built only after incredible input by a special organization and inspired individuals.
By Rhona Lewis
In 1989, when Ethiopia and Israel agreed to restore the diplomatic relations that had been broken off by Ethiopia in 1973, thousands of Ethiopian Jews (aka Beta Israel) flooded to Addis Ababa. A year later, Dr. Hodes, an observant Jew from Long Island, N.Y., was hired by the JDC to be the medical director in Ethiopia and oversee their care. The original six-week contract was to morph into nearly twenty-three years...and Hodes is still counting.
By Rhona Lewis
In a pinewood paneled roof studio in Ramat Beit Shemesh, Israel, Avraham and Rachel Kolberg, Breslover chassidim, teach yoga classes to groups of men and women. Purple and blue exercise mats are neatly folded on wooden shelves. Purple foam blocks, weights of up to twenty kilos and ropes as thick as a man’s wrist are all stacked neatly along the sides of the studio. Plenty of light floods the room from large windows that face the Judean Hills. The sense of peace in this studio comes from more than just the pleasant surroundings.
By Rhona Lewis
Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv zt”l, who passed away on 28 Tammuz, (July18) this year at age 102, spent all of his days and most of his nights learning Torah. He was the paramount leader of our generation, and inspired tremendous awe and reverence in everyone who knew him. Now, every woman has the stunning opportunity to do something in his memory. A Sefer Torah is being written in his memory and women around the world have the chance to dedicate a letter.
By Rhona Lewis
The day after graduating Brandeis University, Sara Yocheved Rigler joined a Vedanta ashram in the woods of eastern Massachusetts. She would never have guessed that the fifteen years she spent there were going to be stepping stones on her path to becoming a world-renowned writer and lecturer on Jewish topics and the initiator behind three programs designed to impact the lives of Jewish women all over the world.
By Rhona Lewis
Children should be seen and not heard. It was a maxim that I heard many times throughout my childhood and which caused me a fair amount of frustration. When, I often wondered, would I cross that invisible line and move out of the periphery to which I was assigned, into the arena of adulthood and be given the chance to express an opinion that people would listen to?
August 7, 2026 
