Posts By Jigsaw Digital

CHARLESTON, S.C. (JTA) — A prominent Jewish Charlestonian’s inspiring response to the massacre last week at the Emanuel AME Church has circulated widely in recent days. Robert N. Rosen’s essay points to the best traditions of life in the city: tolerance, an attentiveness to history, and a powerful sense… Read more »

Last week, a team of the Santa Monica-based RAND Corporation came to Israel and to the Palestinian Authority to present a new study, calculating the costs of different Israeli-Palestinian scenarios. According to the study, in the case of a two-state solution, the Israeli economy would gain more than $120… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Forget fancy pastries, cakes or tarts: Trifles are the best dessert you can make for entertaining. They are delicious and look beautiful and impressive, but are actually one of the easiest desserts you can make. The first time I made a trifle was actually after… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – When considering the Vatican’s creep toward recognition of Palestinian statehood, think “Israel-Vatican” and not “Jewish-Catholic,” say Jewish officials involved in dialogue with the church. A May 13 announcement on an agreement regarding the functioning of the church in areas under Palestinian control raised eyebrows in its reference… Read more »

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — On Shavuot, we are reminded that the Torah is a tree of life to which we are to hold fast. But what happens when that hold slips from your grasp? It’s a question I found myself asking six weeks before Shavuot, late in the Torah service… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Israel’s diplomatic battles have spread to the soccer field. On May 29, the body that governs world soccer, FIFA, will vote on whether to suspend Israel from international play. FIFA’s 209-member countries will vote on a motion introduced by the Palestinian Football Association, which is… Read more »

(JTA) — AMC’s ad campaign for the second half of the final season of “Mad Men” centered on the phrase “The End of an Era.” The clever double meaning of the phrase was that this was not only the end of an era within the show, as the plot spilled into… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – The Iran deal may not be done, but bids by its opponents to shape it are all but buried. Skeptics of the nuclear negotiations have all but given up on a congressional role before the June 30 deadline for an agreement between Iran and the major… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) – When Yeshivat Maharat ordains six women next month, the New York institution will more than double the number of Orthodox clergywomen in the field. For the past couple of years, the clergywomen have been establishing themselves in Orthodox communities while serving as synagogue interns, delivering… Read more »

TAIBEH, Israel (JTA) — To get to her assigned kindergarten, Biyan Azam, then 5, would have had to walk alone through a bustling commercial district and cross a busy intersection. This Arab-Israeli city does not provide school buses and would not transfer Biyan to a school nearer to her home here.… Read more »

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — The Israeli Air Force is getting its moment in the spotlight, with two documentaries airing on television stations and at film festivals, while a feature movie waits in the, ahem, wings. The focus of the films is not on today’s highly professional IAF or its astonishing… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The transformation of Catholic-Jewish relations over the past 50 years has been so successful that few today — neither Catholics nor Jews — know much about Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time”), the landmark document that inaugurated historic changes in the Catholic Church’s relations with other… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) – The Pew Research Center’s newly released 2014 U.S. Religious Landscape Study offers a trove of data on American Jews based on interviews with 35,071 American adults, 847 of whom identified their faith as Jewish. Here are some of the more interesting findings about the Jews. … Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Obama administration officials have long contended that the friction between the U.S. president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not personal and that American support for Israel remains as robust as ever — and arguably even more robust by some metrics. But a year of… Read more »

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Israel’s last governing coalition — divided on war, peace and economics — did agree on one thing: Israel’s religious policies needed to change. Now it appears that the incoming coalition will be organized around the opposite principle: Those changes must end. A coalition agreement signed… Read more »

(JTA) —Hollywood Reporter’s new cover story interview with actress Natalie Portman may be one of the most heavily Jewish-themed articles the magazine has ever published. In it, the Israel-born Portman, who’s preparing for the May 18 debut of her film adaptation of Israeli author Amos Oz’s “A Tale of Love and… Read more »

WALTHAM, Mass. (JTA) – When Jeff Wang was applying to U.S. colleges more than two years ago from his home near Shanghai, Brandeis University was a top choice. Like many Chinese students now at Brandeis, he had discovered the university on Chinese Internet forums that touted the school’s academic rankings and its… Read more »

(JTA) — Shira Goldberg stepped across the stage at East Henderson High School in western North Carolina and presented a yellowed letter to Shani Lourie. The letter’s writer, a German woman seeking help in escaping the Nazis from an American man she believed was a relative, was Shira’s distant… Read more »

CHARLESTON, S.C. (JTA) – Renowned for its gracious architecture and signature Southern charm, Charleston is increasingly celebrated as a foodie heaven. The trouble is, in a city whose culinary specialties embrace (and glorify) oysters, she-crab soup, and shrimp and grits, the burgeoning restaurant scene is nearly off limits to… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) – On a sunny morning last month, I was swept into the women’s section of the Western Wall in Jerusalem in a flurry of aggression directed at the Women of the Wall, the Israeli group fighting for women’s prayer at Jerusalem’s holiest site. One of the group’s… Read more »