Israeli politics and the continuing fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic dominated Jewish concerns this year.
1. Benjamin Netanyahu is ousted as Israeli prime minister.
In June, after four indecisive elections in two years, Israeli leaders Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid assembled a broad-based coalition that enabled Bennett to replace Netanyahu as prime minister. In power for 15 years, Netanyahu was the longest-serving PM in the nation’s history.
An early major achievement of the new coalition was the Israeli parliament’s adoption of a national budget, something that had not been done for three years.