JERUSALEM (JTA)—Call Ehud Barak at age 65 "the comeback kid" and Shimon Peres "Mr. President."

The former Israeli prime ministers picked up key victories on successive days.

A former Israeli prime minister told an audience in Vancouver, Wash., on the 63rd anniversary of D-Day that the threat posed to Western Civilization by radical Islam today is more sinister and dangerous than the threat to civilization for which D-Day was a beginning of the end.

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in recent weeks has gone further than any Israeli leader in reaching out to Syria, but Damascus seems in no hurry to respond.

Jeff Nudelman choked up when he told those attending the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland 87th annual meeting June 11 about what it has been like to work alongside Sharon Weil for the past 12 months.

When Lisa Horowitz and her husband, both attorneys, came to Portland they drew a circle around the Mittleman Jewish Community Center and looked for a home that wasn't more than about 12 minutes away from the center.

"An extraordinarily generous and transformative gift" of $1.5 million by Lorry I. Lokey, one of the nation's top ten philanthropists, will spur the growth of the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies at Portland State University, announced Academic Director Michael Weingrad at an annual review of the program's successes May 30 at PSU.

If you can't get the Jews to the Jewish institutions, take the Jewish institutions to the Jews.

When he was very young and living in his native Panama, others praised Alberto I. Attia's penmanship.

WASHINGTON (JTA)—The old saying "two Jews, three opinions" never rang truer than at a meeting this week between Jewish organizational leaders and Democratic senators.

The organizers and speakers at the Convergence Northwest 2007 Conference held in Vancouver, Wash., provided a serious educational forum on the long crisis in the Middle East.

BERLIN (JTA)—Berlin's senior Orthodox rabbi has delivered an angry protest against the pending installation of the first female pulpit rabbi in the city.

WASHINGTON (JTA)—It's an old conundrum, made urgent by a sudden convergence of interests of the Bush, Olmert and Abbas administrations:

JERUSALEM (JTA)—In the short term, the election of Ehud Barak as Labor Party leader could give Ehud Olmert's ailing government a new lease on life. In the longer term, it could mark the beginning of the end for Olmert's Kadima Party and the return of Labor and Likud as the two main actors in Israeli politics.

JERUSALEM (JTA)—With a new government emerging in the West Bank, one without Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert believes that Israel and the Palestinians can resume peace talks from where they left off when Hamas swept to power in national elections 18 months ago.

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Even with Hamas seizing control of the Gaza Strip this week in a full-scale and bloody assault on Fatah rivals, the Israeli government is not writing the more moderate Palestinian president off yet.

JERUSALEM (JTA)—Israeli and Palestinian leaders are again poised to meet on the pristine Red Sea shore this week in a bid to find a way out of more than six years of bloodshed.

Egypt (JTA)—Israeli and Arab leaders met this week to discuss ways to keep Hamas in the diplomatic wings, but the radical Palestinian group still managed to grab headlines.

WASHINGTON (JTA)—Congressional Democrats voted in aid to Israel, and now they want payback from the pro-Israel lobby: Drum Republicans out.

JERUSALEM (JTA)—One year after the Second Lebanon War, Israel's northern front is quiet, United Nations forces are patrolling the border area and Hezbollah fighters have been pushed back deep inside Lebanese territory.