David Ha'ivri lives with his wife and children in the world's most hotly contested territory and works daily to defend it. As director of Israel's Shomron Liaison Office, Ha'ivri operates within the Shomron Regional Council, promoting public relations for the Shomron and serving as the English-speaking point man for the international media stationed in Israel.

Daniel Retter's father, Marcus Retter, z"l, escaped from Vienna to England in 1938 on the Kindertransport. His father's parents and sister were deported from Vienna to Riga, where they were murdered by the Germans and Latvians. He says that since his father should have been the one asking some of the following questions, the interview is dedicated to his memory.

MK Nissim Zeev (sometimes spelled Ze'ev) established the Shas Party in 1983 as a response to the discrimination faced by Israel's Sephardic population. He served as deputy mayor of Jerusalem from 1983-1998 and has been a Member of Knesset since 1999.

In the less than two years since he gave up his full-time job as a print and radio journalist, Uri Orbach, 50, has distinguished himself as an indefatigable parliamentarian for the Religious Zionist Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) party, which sits in Prime Minister Netanyahu's coalition government.

Non-Jews are no strangers to Israel's policy of inclusivity in its government. What is strange is finding a non-Jewish Knesset member who is more Zionistic than most of his fellow parliamentarians. Ayoub Kara, a Druze Likud Knesset minister, is proud to consider himself one of the most "right wing" members of the Knesset.

"From the age of 12," Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff told The Jewish Press in a recent interview, "I had one dream: to be a tzaddik, a gaon, and a melamed. I never became a tzaddik, I never became a gaon, but I did become a melamed, nodeh l'Hakadosh Baruch Hu."

A portrait of Ze'ev Jabotinsky may still adorn Likud conventions in Israel, but the ideas of this great Zionist leader - who passed away 70 years ago this week - are essentially forgotten and/or ignored.

JERUSALEM - Doron Sheffer, 37, one of Israel's greatest basketball players, shared his story of return to religious observance with a group of Jewish educators.

Sixty-five years ago next month - on August 11, 1945 - Polish-born Holocaust survivor Larry Wenig vowed to utilize all of his talents toward creating a Jewish state in Palestine.

The November midterm elections may well alter the political face of this country. Opponents of Obama administration policies have galvanized their forces and are eager to make their voices heard to the American electorate. One of those people is Jay Townsend, a GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate from New York who will be seeking to unseat incumbent Sen. Charles Schumer.

Many people knew him as Rabbi Hecht. His brothers called him Yank. To most of us he was J.J. - the man who, year after year, we saw standing at the Lubavitcher Rebbe's side for hours, no matter the weather, at the Lag B'Omer parade.

JERUSALEM - Rabbi Yehuda Amital died July 9 at the age of 86. He was among the heads of Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shvut, and among the creators of the Meimad political stream.

During the day, Shea Rubenstein works in real estate development. In the evenings he helps run the Jewish Community Council of Marine Park, an organization he helped establish, to meet the needs of the local community, as its executive vice president.

To some non-Jews, he is simply "America's rabbi." Rabbi Daniel Lapin - great-nephew of the widely revered mussarpersonality, Reb Elya Lapian - lectures across America to audiences both Jewish and Christian, produces audio CDs on such issues as marriage, the Ten Commandments, and the ill effects of vulgar speech, and disseminates a weekly e-mail called Thought Tools.

Though Sephardim are a small percentage of worldwide Jewry, they constitute a majority of Jews living in Israel today. Shas, the Israeli political party representing Orthodox and traditional Sephardim, has become a political powerhouse since its founding in 1984 by former Sephardic chief rabbi Ovadia Yosef.