Old City Jerusalem Businesses Offer Holy Land Gifts to Those Who Can’t Travel to Israel During the Holiday Season

12-08-2022 CBN News Jerusalem

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JERUSALEM, ISRAEL – Tourists have been returning to Israel after the two-year COVID pandemic. Israel’s Ministry of Tourism says the number of people visiting Israel is near pre-COVID levels. For many people, though, a trip to the Holy Land is still a dream. 

That’s where one business in Jerusalem’s Old City comes in. Zak Mishriky runs “Zak’s Jerusalem Gifts,” a shop in the Old City. Zak also has a website where customers from all over the world can shop from home.

“Zak’s gifts is a Jerusalemite Christian site,” Zak told us. “Now after the two years of COVID, it has been the largest website in Jerusalem that provides Christian items – items that bring the Bible to life.” 
 
Zak’s store is a third-generation gift shop that offers a range of gifts from olive wood nativity sets to ancient coins, oil lamps, and much more. 
 
“I want to communicate the Biblical truth, or the Biblical stories, and the things that were found in our Bible,” he said.

One example he showed us is a coin from the time of Jesus, which illustrates the biblical story of the widow’s mite.

“You see I made this, two replicas of the widow’s mite and on the top of it, I wrote, ‘it’s your heart that matters, not your money.’ It’s a Biblical truth. God cares for our heart, He doesn’t need any money,” Zak said.
 
Workers here do, however, so while providing gifts with meaning, Zak also supports struggling Christian brothers and sisters. 
 
“We need people who love Christ to be here. It’s important when pilgrims come to Jerusalem, this is not only stone or churches but they can see real people who have experienced God and who testify that His tomb is still empty,” he said. “My business allows people to work, to be productive, to have food on the table and stay here.”

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That’s where Artza Box also plays a role. It’s a Jewish company designed to bring the Holy Land to Christians in North America.  
 
“The main goal of Artza is to connect. Connect people in Israel to people in America. It’s to connect people to the Bible, to the words, the stories of the Bible. It’s also to connect people to modern-day Israel, to the people that live here, to the small businesses, to daily life here as well. It’s kind of connecting this mixture of ancient and Biblical but also modern between Israel and America and combining the whole together,” said Artza’s founder, Itai Schimmel. 
 
An Artza Box subscription provides locally made gifts four times throughout the year. This month’s box focuses on towns connected with the life of Jesus. 
 
“Because it’s Christmas and we celebrate the birth of Jesus,” Schimmel said. “We have products from Bethlehem, from Jerusalem, from Nazareth, and from the Galilee. Every box has two products from that place and it takes on this immersive journey from all of these regions. And they’re really beautiful, they’re completely unique and we’re incredibly excited for people to receive it.” 
 
Like Zak, Artza provides local businesses and charities with much needed work.

“We’ve had countless businesses and charities cry on the phone to us when we place the order and when we work with them telling us that directly because of Artza and our subscribers they’ve managed to stay in business for another five months or been able to keep their employees.” 
 
He also said the gift boxes bring the Holy Land to life for the recipients.

“They get very emotional when they open them. They open them up with family and friends and you’ve got kids opening them up with their grandparents. You have grandparents opening them up with their grandkids, you’ve got husbands and wives. It’s been very heartwarming,” Schimmel said. 
 
Artza Box and Zak’s Jerusalem Gifts aim to bring the Christmas season to life and regardless of COVID, the message remains the same. 

 
“The last two years the message was, do not worry God is good. You know, now after COVID is over and life came back to normal, I still assure you that God’s still good,” Zak said. “God is good and that His mercy shall follow you to the end of days with COVID or without COVID. He is good.”

Why does Judaism matter and how is it connected to Christianity? Learn more here.

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What to Watch This Holiday Season - MOVIEGUIDE® CHARISMA NEWS

A scene from 'The Star.' (Sony/YouTube)

What to Watch This Holiday Season

11/23/2017 MOVIEGUIDE®  CHARISMA NEWS

In the past, Hollywood used top release three or four Christmas movies during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays – movie's like "It's a Wonderful Life," "Miracle on 34th Street," "A Christmas Story," "Scrooge," The Muppets Christmas Carol," "Home Alone," and "The Santa Clause."

Sadly, in recent years, Hollywood movies featuring Christmas have been few and far between.

This year, however, things are looking up.

This Friday, Columbia Pictures and Sony will release one of the best Christmas movies of all time, a fun, charming animated comedy adventure about the birth of Jesus titled "The Star." And, next week, another great Christmas-themed movie opens, "The Man Who Invented Christmas," about how Charles Dickens codified England and America's iconic ideas about celebrating Christmas in "A Christmas Carol." Though rated PG-13, the recent comedy "Daddy's Home 2" also incorporates the celebration of Christmas in a major, positive way.

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"We hope this trend in making uplifting Christmas movies will continue," said Dr. Ted Baehr, founder and head of Movieguide®: The Family Guide to Movies and Entertainment and the Christian Film & Television Commission®.

"We should remember, however, that, as they say, 'Jesus is the Reason for the Season,'" Dr. Baehr added. "Just as people shouldn't be afraid of saying, 'Merry Christmas,' they should also not be afraid of talking about Jesus Christ and the salvation He brings during this glorious time of joy."

Author of "The Culture-Wise Family" and "How To Succeed in Hollywood (Without Losing Your Soul)," Dr. Baehr is chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission® (CFTVC) and its family guide to movies and entertainment, Movieguide® (www.movieguide.org).

Now in their 32nd year, CFTVC and Movieguide® are the largest, longest-running international, non-profit ministry dedicated to "redeeming the values of the entertainment industry by influencing industry executives and by informing and equipping the public about the influence of the entertainment media."

Charisma Readers save 50% OFF these select Bibles plus FREE SHIPPING plus a Special Bonus for a limited time! Show me the Bibles on sale!

Christmas is coming soon. Get a jump start with these great Spirit-filled bundles. Save up to 70% plus FREE Shipping! Life in the Spirit Gift Boxes, Special Book Bundles, and Christmas Gift Bundles.

If The Economy Is Fine, Why Are So Many Hedge Funds, Energy Companies And Large Retailers Imploding? - MICHAEL SYNDER THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

If The Economy Is Fine, Why Are So Many Hedge Funds, Energy Companies And Large Retailers Imploding?  MICHAEL SYNDER  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG Posted: 18 Nov 2015 04:06 PM PST If the U.S. economy really is in “great shape”, then why do all of the numbers keep telling us that we are in a recession?  The manufacturing numbers say that we are in a recession, the trade numbers say that we are in a recession, and as you will see below the retail numbers say that we are in a recession.  But just like in 2008, the Federal Reserve and our top politicians will continue to deny that a major economic downturn is happening for as long as they possibly can.  In this article, I want to look at more signs that a dramatic shift is happening in our economy right now. First of all, let’s consider what is happening to hedge funds.  For many years, hedge funds had been doing extremely well, but now they are closing up shop at a pace that we haven’t seen since the last financial crisis.  The following is an excerpt from a Business Insider article entitled “Hedge funds keep on imploding” that was posted on Wednesday… BlackRock is winding down its Global Ascent Fund, a global macro hedge fund that once contained $4.6 billion in assets, according to Bloomberg’s Sabrina Willmer. “We believe that redeeming the Global Ascent Fund was the right thing to do for our clients, given the headwinds that macro funds have faced,” a BlackRock spokeswoman told Business Insider. The winding down of the Ascent fund is the second high-profile hedge fund closing in 24 hours. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Achievement Asset Management, a Chicago-based hedge fund, was closing. And those are just two examples.  Quite a few other prominent hedge funds have shut down recently, and many are wondering if this is just the beginning of a major “bloodbath” on Wall Street. Another troubling sign is the implosion of so many energy companies.  Just like in 2008, a major crash in the price of oil is hitting the energy sector really hard.  Just check out these stock price declines… -Cabot Oil & Gas down 37.27 percent over the past 12 months -Southwestern Energy down 68.11 percent over the past 12 months -Chesapeake Energy down 73.98 percent over the past 12 months A number of smaller energy companies have already gone out of business, and several of the big players are teetering on the brink.  If the price of oil does not rebound significantly very soon, it is just a matter of time before the dominoes begin to fall. We are also seeing tremendous turmoil in the retail industry.  The following comes from Investment Research Dynamics… The retail sales report for October was much worse than expected.  Not only that, but the Government’s original estimates for retail sales in August and September were revised lower.  A colleague of mine said he was chatting with his brother, who is a tax advisor, this past weekend who said he doesn’t understand how the Government can say the economy is growing (Hillary Clinton recently gave the economy an “A”) because his clients are lowering their estimated tax payments.  Businesses lower their estimated tax payments when their business activity slows down. The holiday season is always the best time of the year for retailers, but in 2015 there is a lot of talk of gloom and doom.  Most large retailers will not start announcing mass store closings until January or February, but without a doubt many analysts are anticipating that once we get past the Christmas shopping season we will see stores shut down at a pace that we haven’t seen since at least 2009.  Here is more from the article that I just quoted above… Retail sales this holiday season are setting up to be a disaster.  Already most retailers are advertising “pre-Black Friday” sales events.  Remember when holiday shopping didn’t begin, period, until the day after Thanksgiving?  Now retailers are going to cannibalize each other with massive discounting beforeThanksgiving.  Anybody notice over the weekend that BMW is now offering $6500 price rebates?   The collapsing economy is affecting everyone, across all income demographics. Last week we saw the stocks of Macy’s, Nordstrom and Advance Auto Parts do cliff-dives after they announced their earnings.  I mentioned to a colleague that the Nordstrom’s report should be the most troubling for analysts.  Nordstrom in their investor conference call said that they began seeing an “unexplainable slowdown in sales in August in transactions across all formats, across all catagories and across all geographies that has yet to recover.”   I think that a chart would be helpful to give you an idea of how bad things have already gotten.  Jim Quinn shared this in an article that he just posted, and it shows the change in retail sales once you remove the numbers for the auto industry.  As you can see, the numbers have never been this dreadful outside of a recession… But stocks went up 247 points on Wednesday so everything must be great, right? Wrong. The stock market has never been a good barometer for the overall economy, and this is especially true these days. In 2008, stocks didn’t crash until well after the U.S. economy as a whole started crashing, and the same thing is apparently happening this time around as well. One of the things that is keeping stocks afloat for the moment is stock buybacks.  In recent years, big corporations have spent hundreds of billions of dollars buying back their own stocks.  The following comes from Wolf Richter… IBM has blown $125 billion on buybacks since 2005, more than the $111 billion it invested in capital expenditures and R&D. It’s staggering under its debt, while revenues have been declining for 14 quarters in a row. It cut its workforce by 55,000 people since 2012. And its stock is down 38% since March 2013. Big-pharma icon Pfizer plowed $139 billion into buybacks and dividends in the past decade, compared to $82 billion in R&D and $18 billion in capital spending. 3M spent $48 billion on buybacks and dividends, and $30 billion on R&D and capital expenditures. They’re all doing it. Later in that same article, Richter explains that almost 60 percent of all publicly traded non-financial corporations have engaged in stock buybacks over the past five years… Nearly 60% of the 3,297 publicly traded non-financial US companies Reuters analyzed have engaged in share buybacks since 2010. Last year, the money spent on buybacks and dividends exceeded net income for the first time in a non-recession period. Big corporations like to do this for a couple of reasons.  Number one, it pushes the price of the stock higher, and current investors appreciate that.  Number two, corporate executives are usually in favor of conducting stock buybacks because it increases the value of their stock options and their own stock holdings. But now corporate profits are falling and it is becoming tougher for big corporations to borrow money.  So look for stock buybacks to start to decline significantly. Even though it is taking a bit longer than many would have anticipated, the truth is that we are right on track for a massive financial collapse. All of the indicators that I watch are flashing red, and even though things are moving slowly, they are definitely moving in the same direction that we saw in 2008. But just like in 2008, there will be people that mock the warnings up until the day when it becomes completely and utterly apparent that the mockers were dead wrong.