As Passover approaches, the author grapples with celebrating the holiday while hostages remain captive in Gaza for over six months.

Joe Biden marked the first anniversary of American journalist Evan Gershkovich's wrongful detention in Russia, promising to continue imposing costs on Russia for holding him on espionage charges without evidence.

Meir Kahane, an ultranationalist rabbi known for his controversial views, was assassinated in 1990.

Am Yisrael Chai, a popular anthem for the Jewish people, was composed by Shlomo Carlebach in the mid-1960s.

The popular Jewish anthem, "Am Yisrael Chai" (The People of Israel Live), was written and first performed in the mid-1960s by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach at the request of Jacob Birnbaum, the founder of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ).

Between the late 1960s and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, nearly two million Jews left Russia, Ukraine, and other parts of the Soviet Empire, with support from diaspora Jewish communities globally, particularly in the United States.