Rachel Green reads a newspaper while floating in the Dead Sea Sixteen Jewish women, ages 32 to 45, plus group leader Amy Hirshberg Lederman, departed from Tucson in June on a 10-day Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona mission that many say changed their lives. “It was a pretty emotional trip. If the personal is political then this was a political… Read more »
NEW YORK (Forward) — On a single week in late July, a major flashpoint in the internal culture wars of the Orthodox world erupted in two unrelated but connected incidents. The issue was homosexuality. A group of nearly 90 Orthodox rabbis chose July 22 to release its “Statement of… Read more »
Flora Polnauer, guitarist Daniel Kardos, and sax player Janos Vazsonyi perform in Budapest. (Ruth Ellen Gruber) BUDAPEST (JTA) — Flora Polnauer, 28, tilts back her head, half closes her eyes and hums a few bars of a song by her hip-hop/funk/reggae band HaGesher. The song is “Lecha Dodi,” the Shabbat evening prayer — sounded over a Yiddishized version of the Beatles song “Girl.” It’s just… Read more »
Marc Mezvinsky and Chelsea Clinton during their wedding ceremony, July 31, 2010 (Genevieve de Manio) NEW YORK (JTA) — Is it possible that the first iconic Jewish picture of the decade is of an interfaith marriage? Photographs taken Saturday show the Jewish groom wearing a yarmulke and a crumpled tallit staring into the eyes of his giddy bride under a traditional Jewish wedding canopy… Read more »
Rodney Glassman WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Senate could go either way. Hopes are dimmer in the House. And Eric Cantor may at last have company. At least that’s the conventional wisdom on how Jewish lawmakers will do in November. If Jewish candidates sweep all the Senate races in this midterm election… Read more »
Moshe Zohar, who grew these pomegrante trees on his farm in the Negev, is facing eviction from the same government agencies that granted him the land. (Sue Fishkoff) BEERSHEBA, Israel (JTA) — Moshe Zohar’s hands are rough and callused, his face lined with the dust of the desert he farms half an hour outside this southern Israeli city. Eleven years ago Zohar, his wife, Hilda, and their three children settled on this harsh land to build Nahal… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Iran targeted Argentina’s Jews in a horrific car bomb attack 16 years ago. Now, as Tehran infiltrates Latin America, its aim is broader — the Western Hemisphere. Iran, tahe world’s largest and most successful state sponsor of terror, has gotten away with one of its most… Read more »
Daniel Schorr WASHINGTON (JTA) — It took about seven years for Daniel Schorr to tire of being a journalist for Jewish media. The distaste of digesting for JTA’s readers the news of the emerging Holocaust, combined with what he saw as the blinkered parochialism of Jewish news, led him to quit… Read more »
Tourists from Singapore cover themselves with mud while bathing in the Dead Sea. (Yossi Zamir / Flash 90 / JTA) JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli tour guide Yossi Weiss was leading two busloads of American Christian pilgrims on a tour of Jerusalem’s Old City when he noted how difficult it was to move around. The Jewish Quarter was so crowded and busy Monday as the group visited the Temple Mount,… Read more »
Dmitriy Salita works out as he eyes a return to the ring, but has involved himself more directly in helping move young Russian Jews closer to Judaism. (Claudio Papapietro) NEW YORK (Forward.com) — Dmitriy Salita speaks about the future of his boxing career with a look of pure intensity in his otherwise mournful brown eyes. All the greatest boxers have this stare, a perfect distillation of concentration and discipline and total faith in the strength of their arms.… Read more »
Jerome A. Chanes (Courtesy of Brandeis University) NEW YORK (Forward) — With the American Jewish Congress apparently closing its doors, there won’t be many mourners saying Kaddish. Instead, the prevailing communal sentiment will probably be: “We have too many agencies; one less will not matter.” The serious financial problems that had plagued the AJCongress over recent… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a Jewish gathering in New York, July 7, 2010. (Michael Priest Photography) NEW YORK (JTA) — It was an otherwise wholly unremarkable stump speech before a friendly audience in New York. On the evening of July 7 at Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel, the Israeli prime minister addressed a roomful of more than 300 Jews on the subjects of Iran, his government’s eagerness… Read more »
David Naumkin and Olga Elshanskaya, the Jewish Agency for Israel employee who took the 20-year-old from a Chechen orphanage to a Moscow asylum to work with him. (Anna Rudnitskaya/JTA) MOSCOW (JTA) — In a room at a Jewish asylum in Moscow, the boy sits on the lower part of a bunk bed looking down at the floor. Headphones on his ears, he pays no notice to a visitor. Except for his name, David Naumkin, there is no evidence… Read more »
British singer Elton John performs in Ramat Gan, Israel, June 17, 2010. (Flash90 / JTA) JERUSALEM (JTA) — Actress Meg Ryan’s decision to cancel her appearance at this week’s Jerusalem Film Festival didn’t garner the same attention in Israel as British rocker Elvis Costello when he nixed his Israel concert this spring. Both, however, were a reminder to Israelis that in the eyes of… Read more »
Yeshurun Gavish, who will be participating in the July 18 New York City Triathlon, with two of his children. (Yeshurun Gavish/JTA Photo Service) NEW YORK (JTA) — Just six months before the end of his Israeli army service, Elad Belachsan suffered a life-changing injury in a Palestinian attack. On a mission in the West Bank city of Nablus with his paratroopers unit, Belachsan, now 27, was near the front of the group… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — In the history of the State of Israel, never have there been preconditions for face-to-face peace talks. While it was not obligated to do so, the Israeli government last November ordered a 10-month freeze in new building projects in the West Bank. This sign of… Read more »
MOSCOW (JTA) – Years after Russian immigration to Israel dipped and then plateaued, the global economic downturn appears to be sending it higher again. Starting last year, aliyah from the former Soviet Union grew 21 percent over 2008, with 6,818 Russian-speaking immigrants moving to Israel in 2009. In the… Read more »
Stuart Levey WASHINGTON (JTA) — Stuart Levey was given a big stick when the Bush administration made him the first under secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence. But the stick only started to hurt its targets — terrorist groups and rogue nations — when he figured out how… Read more »
A Jewish Red Army veteran speaks at the "Writings and Reflections of Jewish Soldiers in the Red Army" exhibit in Mpscow. (Anna Rudnitskaya) MOSCOW (JTA) — Lev Fein, a Jewish soldier in the Red Army, returned home to Minsk in 1945 to find a letter about his family being wiped out by the Nazis and the dire consequences of the occupation for Belarus Jews. “Father and Uncle Fein died on the third… Read more »
The lake at Kutcher's offers boating and fishing. (Uriel Heilman) MONTICELLO, N.Y. (JTA) — For Yossi Zablocki, it was the phone call of a lifetime. Last February, the manager at Kutsher’s Country Club, the last kosher resort hotel in the Catskill Mountains, called him in a panic with news that owner Mark Kutsher was thinking of retiring and closing… Read more »
