Liberal Michigan rabbis and other Jewish leaders are calling on the Democratic Party to agree to a list of “nonnegotiable” principles about Jewish safety and Israel as the party’s US Senate candidate in the state, Abdul El-Sayed, seeks to make inroads with Jewish voters.

When Tzvike and Hadas Ophir planted their vineyard in 1986, on the day their eldest daughter Adva was born, they had no plans to make wine. They wanted to grow something alongside their bee hives. The couple was among the first residents of Alon HaGalil, a town in Israel’s North about an hour-and-a-half drive from Tel Aviv. Tzvike grew up in Emek Hefer and Hadas in Kfar Yehoshua, both in farming families. Tzvike was also a second-generation beekeeper.

From the micro to the macro: I pray for my heightened focus on each and every word in our prayers and for health for our whole family — and for the excision of the hatred that besets our people and the end to weapons that threaten our people.

For 32 years, Esther Melamed has been the secular studies principal at Beth Jacob High School. That’s a lot of students she has seen and guided. Melamed estimates that over the years she has taught 800 to 900 graduates; a perfect background to bolster conversations about the 250th anniversary of the US and the future of America.

Ask Jonathan Lev, executive director at the Boulder JCC, what he is most proud of at his sprawling campus, and the talking points are significant.

336,004,951. That number summarizes the main accomplishment of Dolly Parton, the beloved country singer who died last month as an enormously wealthy woman. It is the number of books distributed for free, to children in the US and in four foreign countries, as of this month, by the early-childhood literacy intervention program she founded 31 years ago.