Whatsapp CEO Jan Koum spoke at the Mobile World Congress on Feb. 24, 2014 in Barcelona, Spain. (David Ramos/Getty Images) Jan Koum’s birthday was Feb. 24, but he received his big gift early. The Ukraine-born CEO and founder of WhatsApp has catapulted from relative unknown to a poster boy for rags-to-riches immigrant triumph since his rapidly growing messaging company was sold last month to Facebook for a record-breaking $19… Read more »
A man shoots a slingshot at national guard troops following one of the largest anti-government demonstrations yet on March 2, 2014 in Caracus, Venezuela. (John Moore/Getty Images) (JTA) — They left after Venezuelan secret police raided a Jewish club in 2007, and after the local synagogue was ransacked by unidentified thugs two years later. They left after President Hugo Chavez expelled Israel’s ambassador to Caracas, and when he called on Venezuela’s Jews to condemn Israel for… Read more »
Vladimir Putin with Israeli President Shimon Peres during Peres' official visit to Moscow in 2012. (Mark Neyman/GPO/FLASH90) (JTA) — When even Russian policemen had to pass security checks to enter the Sochi Winter Olympics, Rabbi Berel Lazar was waved in without ever showing his ID. Lazar, a Chabad-affiliated chief rabbi of Russia, was invited to the opening ceremony of the games last month by President Vladimir Putin’s… Read more »
The first fuel is loaded at Iran's Bushehr nuclear power pant on Aug. 21, 2010. (Iran International Photo Agency via Getty Images) WASHINGTON (JTA) — The world powers holding a new round of nuclear talks with Iran starting next week are divided by another issue of geopolitical importance: the crisis in Ukraine. Tensions between Russia and the West are mounting over the Russian military takeover of the Crimean Peninsula, with the… Read more »
A wounded individual os transported to a waiting plane, where he will be flown to Israel to receive medical care. (Shimon Briman) TEL AVIV (JTA) — For 17-year-old Bolodimir Bedyuk, a Ukrainian who was severely wounded in clashes with Ukrainian police on Feb. 18, Israeli medical care may be his only hope. After a pitched battle with Ukrainian police forces on Institutskaya Street in Kiev, Bedyuk suffered chest wounds and extensive… Read more »
Anti-Israel protesters march in front of the White House in 2013. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images) NEW YORK (JTA) — Leaders of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement say they are protesting Israel’s policies in the West Bank. They are doing far more than that. BDS advocates routinely oppose a two-state solution and seek to delegitimize the sovereign, Jewish State of Israel. In some cases,… Read more »
A woman lays tefillin at the entrance to Tel Aviv's Carmel Market. Women of the Wall offered women in Tel Aviv the chance to put on a tallit or tefillin on Friday. (Ben Sales/JTA) TEL AVIV (JTA) — They were standing in a public square in a major Israeli city, laying tefillin on women amid shouts of protest and quizzical looks from nearby men in black hats. It has become an occasional morning routine for Women of the Wall. Except this time, they… Read more »
Stan Fischler is flanked by producer Glenn Petraitis, left, and co-host Peter Ruttgaizer at the Nassau Coliseum set of their pregame and postgame shows. (Hillel Kuttler) UNIONDALE, N.Y. (JTA) – As the Boston Bruins buzz the Islanders net throughout the opening period of a game at the Nassau Coliseum, Stan Fischler is standing 10 feet behind the Plexiglas to the left of New York goaltender Kevin Poulin. Fischler, a hockey broadcaster for four decades, can… Read more »
MADRID, Spain (JTA) — News that Spain is proposing to offer citizenship to the descendants of Jews expelled in the 15th and 16th centuries spread like wildfire in Israel. Within hours of the Spanish government’s announcement last month, the Israeli website Ynet published a list of family names supposedly… Read more »
Besides blotting out the name of Haman, would these groggers also wake one to the needs of the hungry? (Edmon J. Rodman) LOS ANGELES (JTA) — On Purim, can we really blot out the memory of an evil like Haman, who threatened our very existence, with a noisemaker? When in a popular Purim song we sing “Hava narishah-rash, rash, rash,” “Wind your noisemakers,” all that “rashing” does momentarily make the darkness… Read more »
Barbara Garson The Tucson Festival of Books, now the fourth largest book festival in the United States, returns to the University of Arizona campus March 15 and 16. One of the many Jewish writers presenting this year will be Barbara Garson, whose latest book is “Down the Up Escalator: How the… Read more »
Actress Scarlett Johansson and Romain Dauriac sit in the audience before the start of the 39th Cesar Film Awards 2014 at Theatre du Chatelet on Feb. 28, 2014 in Paris. (Dominique Charriau/Getty Images) Scarlett Johansson is pregnant HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (JTA) — B’sha’ah tovah to Scarlett Johansson! The 29-year-old “Her” star, of recent SodaStream fame (or infamy, depending which side you’re on), is expecting her first child with French fiance Romain Dauriac, E! News reports. The couple, dating publicly since November 2012, announced… Read more »
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's Policy Conference March 4, 2014 in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) WASHINGTON (JTA) — Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington determined to hold the line on Iran, but he also brought something new: an expansive vision of Middle East peace. The Israeli prime minister remained firm, after meeting with President Obama on Monday, in insisting that any nuclear deal must remove… Read more »
Simferopol Reform Synagogue Ner Tamid on Feb. 28, 2014. (Courtesy Simferopol Reform Synagogue Ner Tamid) Shortly after Russian soldiers occupied the Crimean city of Sevastopol last week, Leah Cyrlikova took her two children out for an afternoon stroll in a city park. When they passed a group of soldiers, they stopped to have a friendly chat and pose with them for photos. While many… Read more »
U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), at left, and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) deliver remarks during the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's Policy Conference in Washington. (Somodevilla/Getty Images) WASHINGTON (JTA) — You’ve got your rousing church choir, your multi-denominational trio of rabbis quoting Torah, your montages of Israelis and Palestinians coming together and, above all, your pleas to please, please, please be nice to one another. Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, Jew, Christian, black, white, Hispanic — the… Read more »
Hundreds of thousands of haredi Orthodox Jews protesting a measure to draft them into the Israeli military, March 2, 2014. (Yaakov Naumi/FLASH90) JERUSALEM (JTA) — Beneath banners invoking historic calamities from the Egyptian enslavement to the Holocaust, hundreds of thousand of haredi Orthodox men gathered on the streets of Jerusalem to recite psalms and penitential prayers as they inveighed against an enemy they consider on par with Hitler and the ancient… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA)– On Mar. 8, we celebrate International Women’s Day, a day intended to celebrate the economic and social advances made by women, while at the same time drawing attention to areas that still need action. It is striking that this year the day falls so close to Purim.… Read more »
Israeli Arab children at a school in Baqa al-Gharblyye reading books from the Lantern Library, a spinoff of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation's PJ Library. (Akmal Nagnagy/Harold Grinspoon Foundation) NEW YORK (JTA) — A Religion News Service article about the PJ Library is headlined “Free books — 10 million of them — help keep Jewish kids Jewish.” Now the foundation behind the widely lauded nine-year-old program — which distributes free books to more than 130,000 Jewish children in… Read more »
In this Nov. 24, 2013 loss to the College of Elizabeth, Yeshiva University Maccabees forward Rebecca Yoshor, No. 34, grabbed 22 rebounds, a category in which she leads the nation. (Courtesy of Yeshiva University Sports Information Office) NEW YORK (JTA) — Watching Rebecca Yoshor in action for the Yeshiva University women’s basketball team, the skills are evident: the shotmaking, quickness, leadership and court smarts. They are skills honed in what her father describes as “fierce games” with her brothers and the neighborhood kids in the driveway… Read more »
The deli counter at Winn-Dixie's Boca Raton store is larger than that of many kosher-only supermarkets. (Uriel Heilman) BOCA RATON, Fla. (JTA) – Stroll past the kosher section of most large supermarkets in America and you could be forgiven for thinking that Jewish diets consist mainly of jarred gefilte fish, unsalted matzahs and Tam-Tam crackers. Not so at the Winn-Dixie supermarket in this affluent South Florida suburb.… Read more »
