'You All Come from Israel,' Netanyahu Tells Olim

‘Joy of Kosher’ Author Moves Her Kitchen to Israel Jamie “Joy of Kosher” Geller started a new life in Israel Tuesday, after years as a highly successful journalist and TV producer.

Jamie Geller, author of “Joy of Kosher,” started a new life in Israel Tuesday, after years of being a highly successful US journalist and TV producer.

In an interview with the Jewish Forward several days before leaving the United States, Geller, a household name in thousands of Jewish homes, revealed that she was “a disaster on wheels in the kitchen” when she married.

“Basically when I grew up my mother had a dream for me to be the first Jewish woman president of the United States,” she told interviewer Katherine Martinelli.

“When I got married, my husband was like ‘what’s for dinner?’ …I was a disaster on wheels in the kitchen. I had gotten all of these kitchen contraptions for our wedding, like a food processor with a video of how to use it… I started making these 911 calls to people in my husband’s family who are all amazing cooks, and they came over and cooked with me. And whatever they thought was easy, I made them easier and easier. And it tasted good!”

A former journalist for CNN, she came up with the idea of “Joy of Kosher,” which started out with a blog and blossomed into a book and a full-blown business.

Geller was raised in a Jewish home in Philadelphia but not as an orthodox Jew. She recalled that she studied in Israel for one year during high school and told her mother, “I want to live here…this is home.”

She plans to continue her career in Israel, where she has discovered she has many followers. 

Geller told Martinelli that she is not worried about missing any foods or ingredients in Israel, where virtually all supermarkets are kosher and where shelves art stocked with almost everything one would find outside the country.

“I like that [Israeli] food itself is so much riper and more flavorful,” she said in theinterview. “It’s healthier cooking. It’s farm to table, and I’m not talking in the trendy sense, I mean there’s literally less time from the farm to your plate, it’s that much fresher…

“I think that Jewish food is the original fusion cuisine because we’ve been scattered throughout the four corners of the earth and the Diaspora, and we’ve really melded them with the flavors of our host country. Israel is the ultimate melting pot for the Jewish people, you have every type of Jewish person there from north African to Russian, whatever, so I feel like it’s incredible to see what that brings and be exposed in the most authentic way."

Nefesh B’Nefesh Video – I’m Making Aliyah for…

Joy and Pride Hit 100% at Nefesh B'Nefesh Landing A planeload of Abraham's progeny comes home from the U.S. and there is hardly a dry eye in the airport.

True joy and pride were at peak levels in Ben Gurion Airport Thursday morning as a planeload of olim from the United States arrived on a Nefesh B'Nefesh flight.

"This is like 40 years of a dream coming true… love it!"… "Why do we do it? Because we looove Israel! Woooo!"… "It's a fulfillment of a prophecy after 2,000 years. May I feelthis way every day!"… "I'm so happy I've been crying the whole flight"…

These were some of the utterances made by joyful olim who spoke to Arutz Shevaupon landing in Israel.

All we can add is: Bruchim haba'im – welcome! May we all feel this way every day.

Moskowitz Zionism Prizes Awarded

Rabbi Yehoshua Fass, co-founder of the Nefesh B’Nefesh English speakers’ aliyah movement, Former MK Rabbi Chanan Porat, who helped re-establish the community of Kfar Etzion after the 1967 Six Day War following his service as a paratrooper, and recently retired director of the Mossad, (Israel’s international spy agency) Meir Dagan were the recipients of the 2011 Moskowitz Prize for Zionism.

The Prizes were awarded in ceremonies on Monday evening at Jerusalem’s City of David (Ir David), located across the road from the Western Wall (Kotel).

Cherna Moskowitz, who founded the prize along with her husband Dr. Irving Moskowitz, was the first speaker of the evening.

“We see reversals in all Arab countries,” she said. “No one can predict what will happen there. We have seen the rise of terrorism since the Oslo agreements and the education of incitement by Mahmoud Abbas. All this causes great damage to Israeli and American values ​​and to the stability in the Middle East. At such a time of uncertainty, the last thing we need to do is to establish another Arab country in any way. All this only emphasizes the necessity of preserving Judea and Samaria in order to allow the Jewish state to survive.”

In the speech he gave after receiving the award, Dagan referred to the location of the ceremony, saying: “This place is not political. The City of David has a deep connection to Jewish history.”

Dagan thanked the members of the Israeli intelligence community for their part in the award.

“If I got this far, it would be appropriate for me to be the mouth of the intelligence people who work day and night. A group of men and women, young and old, who give all their energies and abilities for the State of Israel. Some of them work under difficult risks, they are not recognized, and you read about their successes in classified papers. On the other hand, their failures are smeared in newspapers and on television screens. They are not recognized, and even neighbors and relatives are unaware of their work.”

Dagan added, “Their real greatness is that they know how to learn from their failures.”

In his acceptance speech, Rabbi Fass noted that he does not stand  there on behalf of himself, and that Nefesh B’Nefesh is an operation behind which are many other individuals. He made particular mention of his friend Tony Gelbart, who founded the organization with him but could not receive the award because he does yet not carry an Israeli identity card. Rabbi Fass stressed that the organization is working on this to happen soon.

Rabbi Porat, who received his award after Rabbi Fass, spoke of how he returned to Kfar Etzion following the Six Day War and founded the Gush Emunim settlement movement. “Despite all the obstacles we faced we built thousands of units,” he emphasized.

Rabbi Porat also mentioned the story of his friend, Giora Ashkenazi, who fell during the battle for Jerusalem. He noted that twenty years, he had the privilege to perpetuate his friend’s name in Yeshivat Orot on Mount Olives, which was established with the unconditional support of Dr. Irving Moskowitz.

The annual $50,000 prize was established to support Zionist values in Israeli society and to promote the Jewish nationalist home of Israel.