World « AZ Jewish Post

Amendolara Mayor Salvatore Antonio Ciminelli, left, standing next to JTA's Ruth Ellen Gruber, after presenting award certificates to some of the 100 schoolchildren who attended a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in the town hall, Jan. 27, 2012. The children received awards for art or writing projects about the Shoah. (Photo courtesy Amendolara Town Hall)

For some schoolkids in southern Italy, meeting their first Jew on Holocaust Day

Posted under Columns, World on February 1st, 2012. Leave a Comment »

AMENDOLARA, Italy (JTA) — It was International Holocaust Memorial Day, and when I told my audience that I was a Jew, they burst into applause. I was speaking at the City Hall in this ancient seacoast town in Calabria, deep in southern Italy on the instep of the Italian boot. My audience consisted of some [...]

Peter Keeda, an Australian retiree, stumbled upon the story of a group of Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe who were sent by the British from Cyprus to Palestine and later to East Africa. (Courtesy Peter Keeda)

Seeking Kin: Tracing a group of refugees, from Europe to Cyprus to Palestine to East Africa

Posted under World on January 30th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE (JTA) — A virtually unknown episode in prestate Israel grabbed Peter Keeda last year and won’t let go: the British government’s June 1941 shipment of 384 European Jews from Cyprus to Palestine. They and 39 others were transported six months later to [...]

Seeking Kin: Man hidden as baby hopes to honor rescuer-father

Posted under Religion & Jewish Life, World on January 17th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

JTA’s new “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE (JTA) — Even after seven decades, Peter Nurnberger’s most basic biographical facts remain elusive. The Slovakian doesn’t know his birth date, his natural parents’ fate or whether they had any other children. Peter’s adoptive parents hid him during the Shoah in [...]

Alex Dunai, second from right, has become a leading purveyor of Jewish heritage tourism in Ukraine. (Alex Weisler)

Ukrainian historian makes career in Jewish heritage travel

Posted under Arts and Culture, World on January 16th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

LVIV, Ukraine (JTA) – Alex Dunai is not Jewish. But over 15 years of leading Jewish tourists searching for their roots in Ukraine, he’s built up a serviceable knowledge of Yiddish — though sometimes he has to make things up. “I make up sayings — you have highway roads, we have ‘oy vey’ roads,” Dunai said. [...]

Gustav Zoltay, left, the director of the Federation o Hungarian Jewish communities, and Peter Feldmajor, its president, at the founding of the new Hungarian Jewish Congress. (Szabolcs Panyi)

In Budapest, corruption probe amplifies calls for reform of communal institutions

Posted under News, Religion & Jewish Life, World on January 15th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

BUDAPEST (JTA) – A whistle-blowing rabbi and a reform-minded lay leader are at the forefront of new efforts to shake up Hungary’s entrenched Jewish establishment. Late last year, Rabbi Zoltan Radnoti reportedly alerted authorities to complaints of embezzlement and tax fraud in the operation of Budapest’s main Jewish cemetery on Kozma Street. This led to a police [...]

Reporter Alex Weisler, second from right, and his mother, second from left, unite with lost relatives in Ukraine. (Alex Weisler)

Reporter’s Notebook: Return to shtetl gives texture to reporter’s family history

Posted under Religion & Jewish Life, World on January 14th, 2012. Leave a Comment »

LVIV, Ukraine (JTA) — The more I thought about it, the more it began to seem like a reasonable choice: I would roam around Europe for six months, visiting Jewish museums, talking to youth groups and covering various community happenings. I would travel from vibrant London to the post-Communist countries of the Eastern Bloc. But [...]

U Tin Oo, a former commander-in-chief of Myanmar's army, lights a candle at the Chanukah celebration in Yangon, Myanmar, Dec. 27, 2011. (Sammy Samuels)

In Burmese Chanukah celebration, signs of Myanmar’s openness to West

Posted under News, Religion & Jewish Life, World on January 3rd, 2012. Leave a Comment »

(JTA) – In almost any other community from Moscow to Washington, it would have been just another public Chanukah menorah-lighting ceremony providing an opportunity for the local government and Jewish community to showcase their strong ties. But in Myanmar, where the government has been run by a military junta and the Jewish community numbers just [...]

With Samoa calendar change, question for Jews: When is Shabbat?

Posted under News, Religion & Jewish Life, World on January 1st, 2012. Leave a Comment »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The Pacific island nation of Samoa is taking 186,000 citizens through a national time warp by moving west of the international dateline, forfeiting the last Friday of 2011 and jumping straight from Thursday into Saturday. For Samoans, this solves a practical question: Why remain 18 to 23 hours behind chief trade [...]

Jack Rosen, second from left, the chairman of the American Council for World Jewry, in Pyongyang with a top North Korean official and other members of an ACWJ delegation in this undated 2009 photo. (Courtesy ACWJ)

When the Jews went to North Korea

Posted under National, News, World on December 23rd, 2011. Leave a Comment »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – When a delegation from the American Council for World Jewry went to North Korea, its agenda was typical of visits by Jewish organizations to developing nations: promote outreach to Israel, offer to broker assistance and training, gently raise problematic defense relations with Israel’s enemies. Pyongyang’s agenda was much simpler but just [...]

Memorial candles in Prague for Vaclav Havel, who died this week. Jewish groups and leaders said the former Czech president was a symbol of freedom, Dec. 18, 2011. (David Short via Creative Commons)

For Jews, Vaclav Havel wasn’t just a friend but a champion of freedom

Posted under News, World on December 20th, 2011. Leave a Comment »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Vaclav Havel was a friend of the Jews and of Israel, but prominent Jews who mourned his passing this week said the Czech leader’s greatest legacy was his universal message of freedom. “Vaclav Havel was one of the few islands of intellectual freedom in the sea of totalitarian rule,” Natan Sharansky told [...]