Posts By Jigsaw Digital

Adults and children participating in a silent vigil outside the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels for the four victims of a shooting there by an unidentified gunman, May 25, 2014. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

BRUSSELS (JTA) — Hunched over a small island of memorial candles for the victims of the attack on the Jewish Museum of Belgium, Paul Ambach is lost in thought. “Once again, Jewish blood in Belgium, which is no longer Belgium,” said Ambach, a well-known Jewish musician from Antwerp, as… Read more »

Philip Roth receives an honorary doctorate at the Jewish Theological Seminary's commencement in New York on May 22, 2014. (Ellen Dubin Photography)

(JTA) — “What is being done to silence this man?” an American rabbi asked in a 1963 letter to the Anti-Defamation League. He was talking about the novelist Philip Roth, whose early novels and short stories cast his fellow American Jews in what some considered a none-too-flattering light. Fast-forward… Read more »

What does my mother-in-law have to do with my married life, columnist Edmon J. Rodman recalls foolishly asking soon after he was married 32 years ago. (Edmon J. Rodman)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — In the Ten Commandments, the Torah tells us to “Honor your father and your mother,” but on mothers-in-law, it’s mum. That is until we come to the two-day holiday of Shavuot and read the Book of Ruth, which records the relationship between Ruth and her… Read more »

Equestrian show jumper and Olympic hopeful Danielle Goldstein practicing her routine in central Israel, May 12, 2014. (Ben Sales)

YAGUR, Israel (JTA) — The crowd was sparse and admission was free. Pop music from 10 years ago blared from loudspeakers. A few families sat on bleachers near the athletes, who hopped over a low fence when it was time to compete. The Israeli Equestrian Championships wasn’t the most… Read more »

Shooters shoot. (R to L: Les Hajnal, Lea Rosenfeld, Doris Wise Montrose, etc.) (Anthony Weiss/JTA)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — It’s a sunny morning in Southern California and Lea Rosenfeld, a soft-spoken, bespectacled woman who looks like a Jewish grandmother, squares her feet, faces her target and squeezes off five shots with a handgun. All of them miss. “I never even held a gun in… Read more »

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talks with Pope Francis during their meeting at the Vatican, Dec. 2, 2013. (Amos Ben Gershom/GPO/Flash90)

ROME (JTA) – With a rabbi and a Muslim sheik as his travel companions, Pope Francis is heading to the Middle East with what he hopes will be a powerful message of interfaith respect. It will be the first time that leaders of other faiths are part of an… Read more »

Members of UCLA's student government listen to supporters and opponents of a divestment resolution targeting Israel in a session that stretched into the early morning hours of Feb. 26, 2014. (Courtesy of StandWithUs)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) – UCLA has some proud moments in the history of civil liberties. After World War II, UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley, were the hotbeds of opposition to an anti-communist loyalty oath that California tried to impose on academics. Ultimately the professors won in court… Read more »

Hillary Rodham Clinton speaking at the American Jewish Committee's Global Forum, May 14, 2014. (Ronald Sachs)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – A month before her foreign policy autobiography, “Hard Choices,” hits the bookstores, Hillary Rodham Clinton made an easy choice: She pitched her diplomatic credentials to a friendly Jewish audience. Clinton’s speech to the American Jewish Committee on May 14 was meant to send a signal to… Read more »

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras speaks in a synagogue in Thessaloniki in March 2013, the first visit by a sitting prime minister to a Greek shul in more than a century. (Gavin Rabinowitz)

ATHENS, Greece (JTA) — When the Anti-Defamation League published its global anti-Semitism survey last week, Greece, the cradle of democracy, captured the ignominious title of most anti-Semitic country in Europe. With 69 percent of Greeks espousing anti-Semitic views, according to the survey, Greece was on par with Saudi Arabia,… Read more »

Some 250 supporters of the far-right National Democratic Party marching on May Day in Rostock, Germany, are accompanied by riot police, May 1, 2014. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

BERLIN (JTA) — Armed with ropes and long sticks, a group of teens in Germany’s capital headed out under the cover of night. Their goal: to tear down from lampposts the campaign posters of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party. The young people are one small posse among those who… Read more »

Months after outbreak of anti-government protests, and days before Ukrainians head to the polls to elect a new president, central Kiev still has the feel of a war zone. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) — Even in normal times, Kiev can feel like a city perpetually under construction. Potholes are “fixed” with flimsy coverings, ramshackle scaffolding clings precariously to the sides of buildings, and tangles of electric wires seem ever ready to combust. But since the outbreak of anti-government protests… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The last time New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie spoke at a venue attended by Sheldon Adelson, he alienated the Republican Party mega-donor and other hawkish pro-Israel Jews by referring to the West Bank as “the occupied territories.” Sunday night at a gala awards program in… Read more »

Onno Hoes, fourth from right, the Jewish mayor of Maastricht in Limburg, attending a commemoration ceremony for the city's Jewish Holocasut victims, Oct. 21, 2013. (Stuichting Joods Cultureel Erfgoed)

MAASTRICHT, Netherlands (JTA) — In her nightmares, Tilly Walvis pictured German soldiers storming the house where she was hiding and deporting her children and the Christian couple sheltering them. Walvis had good reason to fear. At the time, her family was living in the home of Albert and Frederika… Read more »

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) speaks at the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference in March. (Gage Skidmore)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Can Rand Paul woo his party’s Jews? The Kentucky senator and likely candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination is stepping up his Jewish outreach. In recent weeks, Paul chatted with rabbis on a conference call and proposed legislation to cut funding to the Palestinian Authority… Read more »

Palestinian children play in a damaged building with a swastika and the Star of David pained on it in a Gaza refugeee camp in 2005. The ADL's survey found that 93 percent of respondents in the West Bank and Gaza have anti-Semitic views. (Abid Katib/Getty Images(

NEW YORK (JTA) – A lot of people around the world hate the Jews. That’s the main finding of the Anti-Defamation League’s largest-ever worldwide survey of anti-Semitic attitudes. The survey, released Tuesday, found that 26 percent of those polled — representing approximately 1.1 billion adults worldwide — harbor deeply… Read more »

Protesters in Jerusalem calling on the Israeli government to take action against so-called 'price-tag' attacks, May 11, 2014. (Yonatan Sindel/FLASH90)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Houses of worship have been vandalized, businesses defaced and car tires slashed. So-called “price tag” attacks have proliferated since Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were suspended at the end of April. Intended to exact a price for Israeli government policies seen as detrimental to the settlement enterprise,… Read more »

A U.S. Army transport plane flies over the pyramids in Egypt in 1943. (Keystone/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — On the outskirts of Cairo, on a blistering hot afternoon in May 1942, British Army chaplain Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz ordered the driver of his military transport truck to pull over for a group of uniformed women who were hitchhiking. “We want to go as far as… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The recent vote by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations rejecting J Street’s membership bid was not entirely surprising. J Street had been reaching out to conference members and community contacts for weeks. We knew that gaining the necessary two-thirds majority was… Read more »

Supporters of the government in Kiev collecting stones in downtown Odessa in preparation for clashes with pro-Russian protesters on May 2. (Julia Gorodetskaya)

(JTA) — Although Ukraine has been charting a bloody course toward civil war for months, Irina Zborovskaya had always felt safe in Odessa. Living in a cosmopolitan city where hate crimes are rare and a tradition of tolerance for minorities and dissidents prevails, many Odessites were lulled into a… Read more »

Miriam Goldfisher, director of a kosher supervision class for women, studying Jewish dietary laws in preparation for the Israeli Chief Rabbinate exam on the topic.

JERUSALEM (JTA) — In a step that further expands the opportunities for women to serve as recognized authorities in Jewish law, the Israeli Chief Rabbinate for the first time is allowing women to serve as kosher supervisors. Nine women took the Chief Rabbinate’s kosher supervision exam last week in… Read more »