nation / world
Biden to Host First-ever White House Rosh Hashanah Party
President Joe Biden is bringing a Jewish High Holiday celebration to the White
House for the first time, JTA reported.

His White House is hosting a Rosh Hashanah reception on Sept. 30, Jewish
Insider reported.

As vice president during the 2009-2017 Obama administration, Biden hosted
Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot receptions at the Naval Observatory, the official vice
presidential residence, the first vice president to do so.

President Bill Clinton was the first president to host a Chanukah party for
staff, and President George W. Bush made it a public event for Jewish community
leaders, a practice continued by President Barack Obama and President Donald
Trump. Obama instituted White House Passover seders, a practice Trump did
not continue, although on at least one occasion, Jewish staffers gathered in the
adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building for a seder.

The Biden White House last year hosted a last-minute Chanukah menorah
lighting in person but has otherwise limited its Jewish events to virtual offerings.

London’s Holocaust Memorial Garden Clears Queen Elizabeth
Tributes Left on its Grounds
As Britons poured out their sadness over the death of their 70-year queen, they
deposited tributes to her all over London — including at a garden designated for
memorializing victims of the Holocaust, JTA reported.

Grace Dean, a reporter for Business Insider in London, tweeted on Sept. 18
that the Holocaust Memorial Garden in Hyde Park, not far from Buckingham
Palace, had turned into “a makeshift Queen Memorial Garden.” She posted pic-
tures showing bouquets, letters and even pictures of Queen Elizabeth II strewn
across the boulders that make up the heart of the Holocaust garden, which was
dedicated with fanfare in 1983.

The post quickly elicited expressions of anger and distress that mourning for
the queen, who died last week at 96, would usurp mourning for the 6 million
Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide during the Holocaust.

On Sept. 19, as London prepared for the queen’s funeral, the official account of
the Royal Parks, the charity that manages eight parks on royal grounds, tweeted
that the items were being removed.

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101-year-old Is Oldest to Make Aliyah From US in Five Years
A 101-year-old woman who made aliyah from New Jersey in mid-September is
the oldest immigrant to move to the Jewish state from the United States in the
last five years, jns.org reported.

Stella Rockoff was born in Jerusalem in 1921, during the British Mandate of
Palestine. Her family immigrated to Brooklyn, New York, when she was 5, and
she moved to Pennsylvania after she married Rabbi Herman Rockoff in 1940.

She later lived again in New York with her husband and four children, where she
worked as executive secretary of the Rabbinical Council of America.

She lived in Clifton, New Jersey, before moving back to Israel with a daughter
and son-in-law as part of a group of nearly 60 olim from North America.

“All my life I dreamed of returning to my native country,” Rockoff said. “This
is a day of celebration for me.”
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Central Bureau of Statistics: Israel’s Population Nears 10 million
The population of Israel is just over 9.5 million people ahead of the Jewish New Year,
according to data issued by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, jns.org reported.

The country has a population of 9.593 million people, according to the CBS.

Of them, 7.069 million (74%) identify as Jewish, 2.026 million (21%) as Arab and
498,000 (5%) as neither.

The bureau states that the Israeli population will reach 10 million by 2024, 15
million by 2048 and 20 million by 2065.

Jews in Israel who are at least 20 are identified as 45.3% secular, 19.2% tradi-
tional, 13.9% traditional-religious, 10.7% religious and 10.5% Haredi.

The average life expectancy for Israeli men is 80.5 years versus 84.6 years for women.

According to the data, 177,000 babies were born in Israel the past year. JE
— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb
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