By Daniel Schümmer
I am a German and I love Tel Aviv. I was not always this way, though. I was born in an old German town, Aachen, the point where Holland, Belgium and Germany meet. Until the spring of 1992, when I was about to turn 16, I had not heard anything good about Israel. In fact, I had no desire to come to Israel in the first place. My love for Israel is my father's fault. It was he who forced me to go on yet another international youth exchange, he who pushed me to meet Israelis. And since then, I've been hooked. I'm addicted to Tel Aviv.

Until the fall semester of my second year of college, I thought that "Mizrahi" referred to a brand of shoes and purses. I did not know about Mizrahi Jews, whose ancestors come from Middle Eastern countries, and who are often inaccurately labeled as Sephardim, a term that connotes Jews whose ancestors come from the Iberian Peninsula. But halfway through my sophomore year, I became more sensitive to such differences, thanks to my involvement with the Sephardi Society at Harvard University.

By Karmel Melamed
While news about Iran often dominates current political headlines, one does not often learn much about its ex-patriot community – particularly its Jewish one. Yet almost 30 years after Iran's Islamic revolution, the near 30,000 descendents of Queen Esther who resettled in Southern California have become one of the most affluent and productive Jewish communities in the United States.

By Victor Wishna

BY Levi Barlavi

by Daniel Silverstein
The East End of London is in many ways analogous to the cultural resurgence on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Here in London, early waves of 19th-century Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe first landed and began their struggle in a new world. And here their great-grandchildren are rediscovering their roots, returning to and reinvigorating the area their forebears left behind in the pursuit of material success and social acceptance.