Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — It is hard to write about what’s happening in Israel at the moment. First of all, we keep being told that the IDF is advancing and succeeding in wiping out the Hamas organization whose terrorists invaded Israel a few weeks ago, wreaking havoc in an orgy of bestiality,

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — Is there such a thing as collective trauma? It seems there is, and Google defines and explains it as “the psychological distress that a group — usually an entire culture, community, or another large group of people — experience in response to a shared trauma. In order to

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel —The eyes of the world are focused on the Gaza Strip at the moment for a variety of reasons. Is Israel going to launch a ground offensive on the northern part of the Strip, after having told the inhabitants there to move south if they want to avoid being

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson 1938 A young couple fled Nazi Germany, found refuge in England and survived the war. Their parents were left behind and murdered. Four years later I was born, thus making them my parents. 1944 V2 rockets fired on London caused the evacuation of children from the city. My two-year old self was

By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — I first participated in a demonstration when I was an impressionable sixteen-year-old, some 65 years ago, in those far-off days when England was a nuclear power and still held on to most of its empire. My friends in the youth movement (Bnei Akiva) were going to the CND