NEW YORK (JTA) – The German government agreed to significantly expand its funding of home care for infirm Holocaust survivors and relax eligibility criteria for restitution programs to include Jews who spent time in so-called open ghettos. The agreement, reached after negotiations in Israel with the Claims Conference, will… Read more »
Posts By Jigsaw Digital
In Senegalese bush, Bani Israel tribe claims Jewish heritage
BANI ISRAEL, Senegal (JTA) — He will welcome you into his earthen-floor home, introduce you to his three wives, and let you sample their cooking. But Dougoutigo Fadiga does not want foreigners to come near the sacred tree of his village deep in the Senegalese bush. “The tree is… Read more »
After botched probe, Claims Conference chairman Julius Berman addresses accountability
NEW YORK (JTA) – Now that it’s clear that the top leaders of the Claims Conference were involved in investigating an anonymous accusation of restitution fraud in 2001, the question is who bears the responsibility for failing to detect that a broad fraud scheme was underway. The person at the… Read more »
As European soccer racism festers, British pros coach Israelis in tolerance
(JTA) — Itzik Shanan and Abbas Suan watched last week as 100,000 English soccer fans sang along to a live performance by a multiracial quartet at London’s Wembley Stadium. Shanan, who started a campaign to eliminate racism from Israeli soccer, and Suan, a well-known Arab-Israeli player, were in Britain… Read more »
Top Claims Conference officials carried out own botched probe of 2001 fraud
NEW YORK (JTA) — The Claims Conference in recent days has blamed a now-dead regional director for bungling an early warning in 2001 about a massive fraud scheme that wasn’t halted until 2009. But a document obtained by JTA shows top conference officials were sufficiently concerned by the allegations… Read more »
Pressing Poland on restitution poses dilemma for U.S., Jewish groups
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Poland is a stalwart American ally in Europe, a bulwark against an increasingly belligerent Russia and, with the recent opening of a major new Warsaw museum, is enjoying a flush of accolades for its belated embrace of its Jewish roots. But there’s a thorn in the… Read more »
To haredim, Knesset member Rabbi Dov Lipman now a turncoat
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Dov Lipman has staked his budding political career on his reputation as a moderate haredi Orthodox leader, someone uniquely positioned to broker compromise between Israel’s increasingly polarized secular and religious communities. The problem is that Israel’s haredi leaders say he’s not actually haredi. Once seen… Read more »
Sridhar Silberfein’s long, strange trip from N.Y. Jew to Hindu honcho
JOSHUA TREE, Calif. (JTA) — In 1968, only six years after founding the AEPi chapter at his Long Island University campus, Steven Silberfein took one of the thousand names of the Hindu god Vishnu and became Sridhar Silberfein. A year later, the one-time Jewish fraternity brother escorted the Hindu… Read more »
Making sense of the Claims Conference brouhaha
NEW YORK (JTA) – Who knew what, and when? Those are the questions critics are asking following the disclosure that the Claims Conference received an anonymous letter in 2001 identifying several fraudulent Holocaust-era restitution claims — nearly a decade before the organization halted a massive fraud scheme. By 2009,… Read more »
With new luxury dorm, Orlando philanthropists offer Hillel evergreen funding model
ORLANDO, Fla. (JTA) – Real estate developer Hank Katzen has a conviction: If you build it, they will come. Except this is no baseball field in an Iowa cornfield. It’s a $60 million, 600,000-square-foot luxury dormitory at the nation’s second-largest college campus, the University of Central Florida in this… Read more »
One month after murder of Aliza Sherman, Cleveland Jews clamoring for answers
CLEVELAND (JTA) — The voice of the 911 caller is frantic, pleading for help. In the background, the victim is heard moaning, her words unclear. “There’s blood everywhere,” the caller says. “I’ve never seen so much blood.” Paramedics arrive on the scene in downtown Cleveland moments later and rush… Read more »
Will controversies hurt liberals’ support for Obama?
WASHINGTON (JTA) — What happens when the rabbi who delivered the invocation at your nomination inveighs against you? Three controversies in quick succession have earned President Obama opprobrium from some of his most steadfast liberal supporters, including Rabbi David Saperstein, who directs the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center. The… Read more »
Hank Greenberg in extra innings
(Washington Jewish Week) — “I think Hank Greenberg was the great American hero,” Washington filmmaker Aviva Kempner says. “What he did on Yom Kippur. What he faced. He was our Jackie Robinson.” Thirteen years after the debut of “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg,” her documentary about the… Read more »
Moroccan king funding preservation of Cape Verde Jewish heritage — but to what end?
PRAIA, Cape Verde (JTA) — A Portuguese rabbi and a Moroccan diplomat stood shoulder to shoulder in a Catholic cemetery here while 200 mourners howled in grief as they buried a resident of this island off the western coast of Africa. The foreigners had come to Cape Verde’s main… Read more »
31 things to do during Jewish American Heritage Month
NEW YORK (JTA) — May is Jewish American Heritage Month, a commemoration first recognized by President George W. Bush in 2006. Since then, hundreds of programs have taken place nationwide annually to honor the rich contributions of Jews to American culture and society. President Obama added to the annual… Read more »
Jewish Scouting leaders vocal on gay inclusion
NEW YORK (JTA) — Jewish Scouting leaders are taking a vocal role in efforts to pass a historic resolution that would partially lift a ban on gays in the Boy Scouts of America. In a meeting of the National Jewish Committee on Scouting in February, members voted overwhelmingly in… Read more »
Israeli Paralympian Pascale Bercovitch eyes 2016 Games in Rio
TEL AVIV (JTA) – Pascale Bercovitch has a firm handshake and a ready smile. She’s hard to keep up with as she takes an elevator to a cafe on the ground floor of her gym in northern Tel Aviv and talks about her hopes to compete in 2016 in… Read more »
Haredi Orthodox youth mob Western Wall to protest women’s prayer service
JERUSALEM (JTA) – Haredi Orthodox youths mobbed the Western Wall plaza by the thousands to protest Women of the Wall as they held their monthly prayer service. The youths, many of them students from haredi Orthodox yeshivas, filled the Western Wall Plaza by 6:40 a.m. on Friday, 20 minutes… Read more »
To stay afloat, shuls merging across denominational divide
(JTA) — The Jews of Corpus Christi knew a decade ago they had to act fast to save their two synagogues.With at most 1,000 Jews left in the Texas town and only 60 families making up its membership, the 60-year-old Conservative synagogue was in shaky financial shape. So in… Read more »
SHAVUOT FEATURE Op-Ed: Rethinking the Ruth-Naomi relationship
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Until recently, I thought of Ruth, the heroine of Shavuot, as a positive role model, a woman who made good choices, was strong and fulfilled. But lately I’ve been rethinking this and focusing on the strange dynamics of what appears to be an unhealthy, possibly abusive,… Read more »