Yearly Archives 2017

Jared’s first year: A report card

(JTA collage)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jared Kushner stands up to bullies. He makes new friends. His academic progress — well, the first year is more about socialization than acing tests, right? President Donald Trump, in the first fraught months of his administration, heralded the promise of his Jewish daughter, Ivanka, and… Read more »

New Jewish security chief surveys a changing landscape of hate

Michael Masters rose through police ranks in Chicago and elsewhere in Cook County, Ill. (Andrew Collings/Jewish Federations of North America)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The U.S. Jewish community is more secure than it was a decade ago but must brace for new challenges, according to the officials who oversee communal security. These include lone wolves weaponizing easy-to-access items like cars; increasingly disruptive protests on campuses; the persistence of attackers inspired… Read more »

Reform rabbis are finding it tough to love Israel

Members of the Reform movement and Hebrew Union College reading from the Torah at the public square in front of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Nov. 16, 2017. (Noam Rivkin Fenton/Flash90)

(JTA) — When Israeli security guards roughed up the head rabbi of the Reform movement at the Western Wall, ripping his suit jacket and shoving a can of mace in his face, Rabbi Jen Lader had a dilemma: How could she talk about the violence without being boring? Lader,… Read more »

Why kosher butchers in Western Europe are preparing to close shop

Nissim Guedj unpacks merchandise at a kosher meat shop in Amsterdam, Oct. 26, 2017. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

PARIS (JTA) – When Jerry Levy’s family opened one of the first gourmet kosher meat shops in France, they had some of the country’s best-laid business plans. Hailing from a long line of Jewish butchers in their native Algeria, they had the expertise and diligence in 1977 to cater… Read more »

‘The Mooch’ gets surprisingly Jewish to stump for Trump in Israel

Anthony Scaramucci, center, speaks alongside officials of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce at a news conference at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, Nov. 21, 2017. (Courtesy of Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce)

  JERUSALEM (JTA) – Anthony Scaramucci, the short-lived White House communications director, is not a member of the tribe. But he came close to declaring himself one during a visit to Israel this week. “A few more days here and I’d probably convert to Judaism,” Scaramucci joked to JTA… Read more »

OP-ED: How Jews on the left and the right are empowering BDS

An aerial view of Michigan Stadium as the sun rises on the University of Michigan campus. (University of Michigan/Flickr)

(JTA) — The BDS debacle at the University of Michigan proved once again that Jews can be their own worst enemies. Since 2002, the University of Michigan’s Central Student Government (CSG) has, on 10 occasions, rejected resolutions to support the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction the State… Read more »

OP-ED Jews make news, but when is it Jewish news?

A screenshot from Google Images shows several prominent Jews accused of sexual harassment in the past month. (Google Images)

NEW YORK (JTA) — “Is So-and-So Jewish? How Jewish is she? Find out if she’s Jewish.” I often joke that JTA reporters and anti-Semitic bloggers write the same stories, only with different headlines. We proudly search down Jewish celebrities to show the diverse ways that Jews are contributing to… Read more »

Europe’s only Jewish hospice gives Holocaust survivors a dignified farewell

Henny Goudeketing, left, and Anne van de Geest at the main hall of the Immanuel Jewish hospice in Amsterdam, Nov. 1, 2017. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Henny Goudeketting, a 95-year-old Holocaust survivor, is ailing and preparing to leave the world. Goudeketting, who was sterilized in Nazi medical experiments at Auschwitz, has neither children nor other relatives to care for her. Now, after multiple infections and recurrent falls, she’s readying to say goodbye.… Read more »

Why did this Muslim majority country put a Jewish congressman on a stamp?

Rep. Eliot Engel is featured on a Kosovo postage stamp in what may be a first. (Office of Eliot Engel)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rep. Eliot Engel has become the first U.S. congressman to be featured on a postage stamp in Kosovo. Engel, a New York Democrat, may be the first Jewish member of Congress on a stamp, period. Bella Abzug helped inspire a 1999 stamp celebrating the women’s rights… Read more »

After Nazis killed her family, this woman joined the partisans to fight back

Rose Holm at her apartment holding a photo of her late husband, Joe, Oct. 31, 2017. (Josefin Dolsten)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Nazis came for Rose Holm’s family in the afternoon. By the evening, the 16-year-old was lying among corpses in the underground bunker where she and her family had been hiding. “I was between those dead ones, and I didn’t know if I’m alive or I’m… Read more »

The Trump administration says it wants to shut down the PLO mission. Now what?

The flag of the Palestine Liberation Organization seen above its offices in Washington, D.C., Nov. 18, 2017. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — In 1987, Congress passed legislation that declared there would never be an office of the Palestine Liberation Organization on U.S. soil. President Ronald Reagan agreed and signed the law. Seven years later the law was still on the books. But that year the PLO opened an… Read more »

Their troubled brother wandered into Gaza. Now his Ethiopian-Israeli family wants US help to get him back.

A photo of Avraham Mengistu on a shirt worn by a relative protesting in Israel, Aug. 17, 2015. (Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Ilan Mengistu knows his pitch to rescue his brother, Avera, should be a no-brainer to Jews — “pidyon shvuyim,” the redemption of the hostage, is among the greatest of commandments. But Mengistu also knows that the story he has to tell is not the straightforward narrative… Read more »

Judaism is the star at a Bible museum built by Hobby Lobby

Kids can be Samson bringing down the walls at Courageous Pages, the play area at the new Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. (Ron Kampeas)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — As the Burning Bush crackles, God is heard. “Mow-zes,” God says in the mysterious mid-Atlantic accent that Hollywood once trained its actors to use — the one Anne Baxter as Nefertiti used to summon Charlton Heston’s Moses in the 1956 blockbuster “The Ten Commandments.” “Mow-zes, Mow-zes.”… Read more »

Why an Israeli soldier insists he beat a Palestinian, but the army doesn’t buy it

Dean Issacharoff is the spokesman for Breaking the Silence, a much-maligned nonprofit that opposes Israel's military occupation in the West Bank. (Screenshot from Facebook)

TEL AVIV (JTA) – Imagine for a moment that a soldier is suspected of misconduct in the field. Typically, someone might be expected to report the soldier, prompting the army to investigate. The soldier might deny any wrongdoing. Well, in Israel, a recent case unfolded in almost exactly the opposite way.… Read more »