Ilana Kurshan

Dec 18, 2024 | jewishbookcouncil.org | Ilana Kurshan |Neri Aluma |Amit Trainin

The children of Rainbow Kindergarten have a Friday routine. Walking with their teachers, Merav and Tal, they enjoy the open space of a field a short distance from their school. Their play is mostly unstructured, but when flowers bloom in the Israeli winter, they gather dandelions and blow the plants’ white seeds into the air. When a sign appears announcing that new housing will be built atop their playground, the change is difficult to accept.

Feb 15, 2024 | lilith.org | Ilana Kurshan

Straddling Black and White by Kim Salzman (Acorn Publishing, $15.99) is a novel about a young woman’s arduous and courageous Aliyah journey as part of Operation Moses, the massive air- lift of Ethiopian Jewry to Israel in the 1980s. When she is just 14, Azmera sets off with her father’s brother Solomon from her Ethiopian village to a refugee camp in Sudan, leaving behind her pregnant mother, Tigest, and her four younger siblings.

Oct 24, 2023 | lilith.org | Ilana Kurshan

Last Friday afternoon, on the eve of Shabbat Breishit, my husband got a call from our synagogue Gabbai asking him to help roll the Torah scrolls. On any other year the scrolls already would have been rolled on Simchat Torah, when it is traditional to complete the book of Deuteronomy and then roll back to the start of Genesis. But this year all the scrolls were still in Deuteronomy, because the first air raid siren in Jerusalem had gone off just after 8am.

Oct 11, 2023 | washingtonjewishweek.com | Ilana Kurshan

By Ilana KurshanI was chanting from the Torah in synagogue when the first siren went off.

Oct 11, 2023 | jewishaz.com | Ilana Kurshan

JERUSALEM (JTA) — I was chanting from the Torah in synagogue when the first siren went off.