Omri Casspi of the Cleveland Cavaliers, atypically on the court rather than riding the pines, driving against the Chicago Bulls, Jan. 7, 2013. (NBA Photos) BALTIMORE (JTA) — Even as he sits on the Cleveland Cavaliers bench, watching yet another game proceed without him, Omri Casspi is working to improve. He studies his teammates and his opponents, focusing on the player he’d likely be defending if he were on the court. Casspi uses the… Read more »
BERGENFIELD, N.J. (JTA) — Some years ago I was discussing David Hartman’s work with the renowned Israeli philosopher Aviezer Ravitsky. “Hartman is not a scholar,” Ravitsky said about his colleague in Department of Jewish Thought at The Hebrew University. “He is more than a scholar.” Indeed he was. Rabbi… Read more »
Men blowing shofars to help the unmarried find matches at the ceremony of the grave of Rabbi Yonatan ben Uziel in a forest near Safed, Jan. 27, 2013. (Ben Sales/JTA) AMUKAH, Israel (JTA) — They walked up a tree-lined path through stony hills to a square, white building — men in black hats, beards and frock coats; in T-shirts and jeans; in sweaters, slacks and velvet kippahs. They came by the hundreds — 19-year-olds looking for a match, 40-year-olds… Read more »
Eran, a gay Israeli-Frenchman, left, with son Elai-Gabriel and partner Jean-Louis at their Paris home, January 2013. (Courtesy Eran) (JTA) — Wide-eyed and smiley, Elay-Gabriel seems utterly unaffected by the French media’s sudden interest in him. A dozen French journalists have visited the 18-month-old in recent months because he is trapped in a sort of legal limbo: He cannot obtain citizenship because the state does not recognize children… Read more »
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — With Purim this year falling on the same weekend as the Academy Awards ceremony, I found myself wondering how best to get my once-a-year portrayal of a Purim character up to award-winning quality. My standard getup — fake beard, “Persian-style” bathrobe and slippers — is looking… Read more »
Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jewish identity and connection are the birthright of every Jew. So why do so many Jewish institutions discriminate against Jews with disabilities? It keeps happening because we let it happen. We make excuses by saying there isn’t enough support or enough dollars, or because we value… Read more »
Nick Muzin, left, consulting with then-Rep. Tim Scott at a forum in Charleston, S.C., hosted by Scott for Republican presidential candidates, August 2011. (Photo by Kay Fekete, courtesy of Nick Muzin) WASHINGTON (JTA) – On a Saturday night following Shabbat, Nick Muzin arrayed on his dining room table what would turn out to be the winning strategy to elect the first black Republican to Congress from South Carolina in more than a century. The next night at the same table… Read more »
BEIT SHEMESH, Israel (JTA) — Next to the Modern Orthodox Orot Banot girls school in Beit Shemesh, fresh mounds of dirt and a huge hole in the ground indicate the spot where a community center is being built. Orot Banot was at the center of conflict between local haredi… Read more »
Israeli schoolchildren studying at Tel Aviv elementary school, 2010. (Moshe Shai/Flash90/JTA) WASHINGTON (JTA) – An in-depth comparative study of Palestinian and Israeli school textbooks is offering some conclusions that already are making some Israeli government officials very unhappy: Palestinian textbooks do not have as much anti-Israel incitement as often portrayed. While this finding might appear to be welcome news for… Read more »
Israeli women who immigrated from Ethiopia attending an event markin the Sigd holiday of Ethiopian Jewry in Mevaseret Zion, November 2012. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90/JTA) TEL AVIV (JTA) – Following a TV report alleging that Ethiopian Israeli women were being given contraceptive shots against their will, Israel’s Health Ministry has ordered physicians to put a stop to the practice. The report, broadcast Dec. 8 on the “Vacuum” investigative news program on Israeli Educational Television,… Read more »
SYDNEY (JTA) — More information has begun to trickle out about the mysterious man known as Prisoner X who hanged himself in Israel’s Ayalon Prison in 2010. The Australian Broadcasting Corp.’s “Foreign Correspondent” program made headlines worldwide when it reported this week that the prisoner, whose identity was so… Read more »
Pope Benedict XVI praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, May 12, 2009. (Flash90/JTA) ROME (JTA) — Pope Benedict XVI’s eight-year reign as head of the world’s 1 billion Catholics sometimes was a bumpy one for the Vatican’s relations with Israel and the wider Jewish community. But it was also a period in which relations where consolidated and fervent pledges made to continue… Read more »
Arik Lubovsky Before I left for Israel, friends and family asked if I was afraid. “Not really,” I replied. It wasn’t until I was actually there, relaxing on the patio of the Mizpe Hayamim health farm … Read more »
Uri Dromi The announcement that President Obama will visit Israel in the spring came as a total surprise. Not that a visit of the leader of the greatest nation on earth (still) and the closest ally of Israel should be unwelcomed, but the circumstances seem a bit odd. First of all,… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — Little kids will laugh at anything. The simplest knock-knock joke or a tickle fest — even the threat of one — can so easily end in hysterics. They laugh because they are surprised by something unexpected in a world they are constantly discovering. If only… Read more »
In "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," a film with characters that bring to mind the themes of Tu b'Shvat, Bilbo Baggins discovers there is trouble brewing in the forests of Middle-earth. (Courtesy Warner Bros.) LOS ANGELES (JTA) — What lore does Bilbo Baggins have to share with us about Tu b’Shevat? While viewing “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” and hearing the Middle-earth characters talking about threats to the forests, more than a seed or two of connection between the increasingly popular Jewish holiday… Read more »
The design of Italy's Holocaust museum in Rome will feature a huge flattened black cube bearing the names of Italian victims. (Courtesy Rome City government)
ROME (JTA) — If all goes according to plan, a starkly modern, $30 million Holocaust museum will soon rise on the site of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s Rome residence. The site, also the location of ancient Jewish catacombs and now a city park, will be home to a museum… Read more »
Yair Shamir, son of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, is second on the hardline Yisrael Beiteinu's Knesset list. (Courtesy Yair Shamir) TEL AVIV (JTA) — Yair Shamir says he doesn’t discuss hypotheticals. For the Israeli Air Force commander turned technocrat turned politician, these topics include how to respond to settlement evacuations or achieve Palestinian statehood, a fracture in the U.S.-Israel relationship or Yisrael Beiteinu chairman Avigdor Liberman’s departure from politics.… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu poised to win re-election later this month, some critics of Israel’s peace and security policies worry out loud that Israel’s political cycle — its pattern of cycling alternately between the political left and right — is stuck on the right. “This… Read more »
Yair Lapid, founder of the Yesh Atid party, at an economy conference in Tel Aviv on Dec. 25, 2012 presenting a graph similar to the "bomb" graph shown by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations General Assembly three months earlier. The Lapid graph shows the difficulties of the middle class. (Yossi Zeliger/Flash90/JTA) TEL AVIV (JTA) — Uncertainty is an inherent condition of democratic politics, but one outcome is all but certain in next week’s Israeli elections: the right wing will win and the left wing will lose. Almost every party acknowledges that the merged Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu factions will take… Read more »
