DJERBA, Tunisia (JTA) — Two thousand years ago, a mysterious woman who was unable to talk arrived on this island. Every sick person she touched was healed. Although she died when her wooden house caught fire, her body remained intact and did not burn. That’s a local legend. Another is that the miracle worker is [...]
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BUDAPEST (JTA) — The debate over anti-Semitism in Hungary has sharpened since the anti-Israel, anti-Jewish and anti-Roma (Gypsy) Jobbik movement entered Parliament two years ago as the country’s third largest party. Seeking scapegoats and channeling paranoia at a time of severe economic, social and political woes, Jobbik’s lawmakers regularly — and loudly — spout xenophobic, [...]
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BUDAPEST (JTA) — Linda Ban is a rebbetzin, but with a mass of curly hair and chunky rings on the fingers of both hands, she hardly fits the stereotype of a Central European rabbi’s wife. A mother of two in her mid-30s, Ban is married to Tamas Vero, the 38-year-old spiritual leader of Budapest’s Frankel [...]
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WARSAW (JTA) — Fifteen years ago, Pawel Bramson was a skinhead shouting anti-Semitic and racist slogans during soccer matches. He hated Jews and blacks – simply, he says, because you need someone to blame for what’s wrong in the world. These days he keeps kosher, wears the long beard and black hat typical of some [...]
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NEW YORK (JTA) – Supporters say he’s an innocent man caught up in the tentacles of a corrupt Latin American regime. Authorities in Bolivia, however, allege that he’s a shady businessman with ties to drug dealers and money launderers. What’s certain is that Jacob Ostreicher, a 53-year-old Chasidic Jew from New York, is in a [...]
Read More »ATHENS, Greece (JTA) — Jewish leaders in Greece expressed concern and disappointment after the fascist Golden Dawn party was poised to enter the Greek parliament for the first time. With most of the ballots counted, Golden Dawn received nearly 7 percent of the vote in Sunday’s elections as Greeks punished the mainstream parties they blame [...]
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The windows are smashed, the doors stand agape and the keys in the rusting padlocks have not been turned for years. Still, despite the plaster clinging to the crumbling bricks in leprous sheets, the front looks salvageable. The back, however, tells a different story. Piles of debris block gaping holes knocked through the walls when [...]
Read More »BRUSSELS (JTA) — Jihadist websites eat up a fair share of Bart Olmer’s workday. He even has passwords to some closed hate forums. “Reading hate speech is part of the job,” says Olmer, who reports on intelligence services for Holland’s largest circulation daily, De Telegraaf. It’s an explanation he may need to repeat for security [...]
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PARIS (JTA) — Jewish voters couldn’t put incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy over the top in the first round of presidential elections in France. The Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande eked out a 1.4 percent victory on Sunday over Sarkozy, the center-right president, although Jewish community leaders said Sarkozy was the undisputed favorite among Jewish voters. Hard [...]
Read More »NEW YORK (JTA) — Lithuania’s 800-year-old connection to its Jewish population broke down in 1941, when the Nazis invaded the country and murdered nearly all of its 200,000 Jews – often with the complicity of local Lithuanians. This month, 70 years on, Lithuania finally passed historic compensation legislation to provide some $50 million in compensation [...]
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