Join thousands of members of the Jewish and Israeli community to celebrate Israel's 65th birthday with: live performances, booths from community organizations, art vendors, short films and animation, activities for kids, teens, and young adults, Israeli folk dance, a special community Walk the Land Israel 65 and the presentation of the Israel in Our Hearts Award and Roselyn C. Swig Tikkun Olam Innovation Prize.

Marcia and John Goldman

Israel in the Gardens Honorary Chairs

In the alley, visitors will be able to charge their phones, learn about the newest useful App, interact with tech professionals, vote on a world changing technology, or even grab an ice cream. Looking for a job? Bring your resume. Looking to invest? Bring your checkbook. Or just take walk through the alley and learn about something new.

Innovation Alley is on the east side next to Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.  This event is FREE, brought to the community by the Jewish Community Federation. For more information please vist www.innovationalley.org 

The Sapir College near Sderot brings to the Negev a pulse of creativity, critical thinking and renewed energy that plays a crucial role in the ability to affect the country as a whole. Their ambition is to create and nurture an empowered civil society in a poverty stricken multi ethnic region of Israel.

The School of Audio and Visual Arts is currently producing a new generation of talented professionals who creatively relate both to their own experiences and to the world around them. They provide a new cinematographic way of telling stories, often stories that have fallen by the wayside. These are the unheard voices of Israel's periphery, in films made by those who live there and don't fear facing their reality.

Strings: 12 minutes / Lior Golan, Tal Arbiv

Whilst the town's shiny big theater attracts a crowd of people, a marionette puppet performs on the street corner and barely catches the interest of a single spectator. His master, an old man in his last years, cannot keep up with the marionette¡¦s pace and give him the support he needs to succeed. Desperation turns to hope when he discovers that the big theater is conducting a talent show that could bring him his long awaited fame. But the way over is quite complicated when you are a puppet with feelings.

Temporary Shift: 17 minutes / Einav Zaguri

While everybody stops for a moment to recharge their batteries, Lior feels she is in a rut. During a night shift at the gas station where she works, the fantasies in Lior¡¦s mind begin to get mixed up with reality and a chance meeting changes the picture.

Salt of the Earth: 28 minutes /Roni Beeri 

21 years old Iris and Dana, best friends since childhood, want to make lots of fast money so they can go on their dream trip. Like thousands of Israelis their age, they went away to work illegally in mall sales in the USA for a handsome boss named Ben. They've made lots of cash and are now ready to leave. But on their last day, Iris gets an offer from Ben, who she's having an affair with. Can she refuse this offer? Will their longtime friendship survive this new world of greed and deception?

Nyosha: 12 minutes / Liran Kapel, yael Dekel 

A true story based on a testimony of a Holocaust survivor, the late Nomi Kapel. Nyosha is a ten year old girl who lives with her mother in a small village in Poland. Nyosha has a seemingly naive and simple dream; to buy herself a pair of shoes. But a ruthless war is arriving, and her dream is put aside. In midst of a terrible action, when she stands face to face with death and the fatal moment when she is torn from her mother and taken to the truck. Nyosha believes that her shoes are the ones that convinced the Nazi soldier who held her, to spare her life. A range of animation techniques brings together the dream and the reality and tells Nyosha's story.

Meltdown: 25 minutes / Kathy Rivkin 

12 year old Vika dreams of appearing in the Russian national ice-skating team. She is rejected on account of being Jewish, and her father, Alexander, decides to migrate to Israel. What is Vika supposed to do in a country that has no ice-skating rinks, indeed, no ice, and where the seasons are don't change?

Happy Holidays: 28 minutes / Luca Marvanyi 

Magda and Yutka, two sisters who have emigrated from Hungary, live in an absorption center in Israel. On the 24th of December, Magda rejects Jutka's request to celebrate Christmas with her, as they did in their childhood. During that day they need to face their mixed identity.

Away/ Fiction / 20 minutes / Dalit Arnold 

Lena, a Swiss stills photographer, breaks off her relationship with her Israeli boyfriend one month after following him to Tel Aviv. All she wants is to leave everything behind and return back to Switzerland. However, she is forced to stay another week to perform an urgent assignment for the Swiss newspaper she works for-pictures for a story about the missile stricken city of Sderot. Lena won't make it to Sderot. She finds herself wandering in Tel Aviv, taking a journey into a foreign city that results in a reexamination of her life.

Mouth Wide Open, Ears Shut Tight 15 minutes / Tom Madar, Emlly Noy 

A day in the life of a young woman living a silent, lonely life with her friend the fish. The silence is broken when a new tenant comes to live in the apartment next door. Notwithstanding the constant sounds and noise penetrating through from the other side of the wall and perhaps because of them, the young woman finds herself falling in love with her neighbor.