Posts By Jigsaw Digital

(Jewish Ideas Daily) — First, the bad news: Sexual, physical, and emotional abuse occurs in Orthodox Jewish communities. Next, the worse news: Though there is no evidence that such abuse occurs more frequently among the Orthodox than in other populations, two recent front-page New York Times stories are just… Read more »

Yana Levy, left, and her husband, Harry, and their three children inside their apartment in Sofia. (Courtesy Bulgaria Office of the American Joint Distribution Committee)

SOFIA, Bulgaria (JTA) — The stories – some months or years in the making — started trickling in last year. Young successful families were showing up desperate. As Bulgaria’s program director for the American Joint Distribution Committee, Julia Dandalova ran social services programs for the Jewish community’s most needy:… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Ari Babaknia doesn’t expect that Iran’s president will ever read his four-volume series of Holocaust books written in the Farsi language. But the author says he is confident that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knows the books exist. “I’ve done 10, 11 television interviews,” Babaknia said — interviews that… Read more »

GREENSBORO, N.C. (JTA) — The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” Since the May 8 vote to approve North Carolina’s Amendment One referendum, which constitutionally bars the state from recognizing as legal any marriage… Read more »

(Jewish Ideas Daily) — There is a lot of hand-wringing these days about whether the rising costs of Jewish day schools are sustainable. The discussion has been about money, but this misses the point: The largest costs of day school tuition are not financial but moral, and the key… Read more »

Members of the Korean community in Israel gathered in Kfar Menachem, May 10. (Dr. Kangkeun Lee)

KFAR MENACHEM, Israel (JTA) – It’s become a mainstay of Saturday nights on the Ben Yehuda Street pedestrian mall in Jerusalem. Between the crowds of Israeli revelers and American teens at the frozen-yogurt shops, a group of Koreans singing hymns vies for attention. It’s one of the most public… Read more »

Justice Gabriel Bach, the prosecutor in the trial of Adolf Eichmann, in front of the Vossius Gymnasium in amsterdam. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Gabriel Bach knew he was Jewish and that the Nazis were a serious threat, but at 13, leaving his new school and home in Amsterdam proved heartwrenching. What if, the boy wondered, he could stay just a few more weeks to finish the academic year? Bach… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – There was common ground on Iran and preserving the social safety net at a meeting between Democratic senators and Jewish community leaders, although subtle tensions on both issues emerged. In the back-and-forth on Capitol Hill, the senators pushed back against the notion that the Obama administration… Read more »

Congressional candidates for the upcoming special CD8 election, Democrat Ron Barber, Republican Jesse Kelly and Green candidate Charlie Manolakis, debate at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on May 23, 2012. (Marty Johnston/TJCC)

Democrat Ron Barber, Republican Jesse Kelly and Green candidate Charlie Manolakis sparred politely at their last debate before a Congressional District 8 special election on June 12. But the three candidates, vying to complete the term of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, clearly delineated their battle lines before an audience… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — By the time he was 26, Jan Karski had been imprisoned by the Soviets, tortured by the Gestapo, and nearly drowned while escaping from a hospital in German-occupied Slovakia. Had he chosen then to end his service in the World War II-era Polish underground, few would… Read more »

James Lago, a street merchant in Juba, South Sudan, with the Israeli flag. (Armin Rosen)

JUBA, South Sudan (JTA) – This city in the world’s newest country is not your typical Arabic-speaking capital. For one thing, most of the city’s inhabitants are Christian. For another, the Israeli flag is ubiquitous here. Miniature Israeli flags hang from car windshields and flutter at roadside stalls, and… Read more »

Rabbi Alona Lisitsa, a Reform rabbi, participated in a religious council in Mevasseret Zion, a town west of Jerusalem, May 2012. (Rabbi Alona Lisitsa Facebook Page)

Non-Orthodox movements continue making inroads in Israel By Mati Wagner JERUSALEM (JTA) — After a Jerusalem-area’s religious council allowed a female Reform rabbi to participate in its proceedings, some advocates of liberal Judaism in the country are hailing their inroads into the Orthodox-dominated religious infrastructure. At the beginning of May,… Read more »

Vice President Joe Biden, left, speaking with Richard Stone, chairman, and Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice president, of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, May 21, 2012. (Joshua Roberts)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The differences between the U.S. and Israeli positions on Iran’s nuclear program are about to become very clear, and the Obama administration is reassuring the Jewish community that the divide is not so vast. Administration officials in a meeting Monday with Jewish communal leaders emphasized that… Read more »

Rabbi Arthur Schneier, left, meets with U.S. subcontractor Alan Gross in the Havana prison facility where Gross is being held, March 6, 2012. (Courtesy Appeal of Conscience Foundation)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Advocates for Alan Gross say talk of a trade with the “Cuban Five” is a non-starter, but acknowledge hopes that the Obama administration will consider lower-level concessions for the five Cuban spies in exchange for Cuban considerations for the jailed American. Insiders say that Gross’ advocates… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Unlike other Jewish holidays, the Torah does not specify a date for Shavuot; it is celebrated on the 50th day (seven weeks) after Passover. We moderns celebrate Shavuot on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan; in ancient times, when the first day of… Read more »

Daniel Levine, fourth-generation owner of Manhattan's J. Levine Books and Judaica, says that while online booksellers such as Amazon hurt his business a decade ago, now he's been able to use the Web to boost his sales. (Alexandra Halpern)

NEW YORK (JTA) — The books are in the back at J. Levine Books and Judaica. Before finding the volumes of Jewish titles at the midtown Manhattan store, customers encounter a rotating display of mezuzahs on the left, followed by shelves of kiddush cups and a rack featuring a Hebrew-language… Read more »

Some 40,000 haredi Orthodox men filled Citi Field in New York to rally against the dangers of the Internet, May 20, 2012. (Ben Sales)

NEW YORK (JTA) — The sellout crowd that filled Citi Field on Sunday night wore black and white, not the New York Mets’ blue and orange. And instead of jeering the Philadelphia Phillies or Atlanta Braves, they faced a foe that was, to hear them talk about it, far… Read more »

(Cleveland Jewish News) — The Cleveland deli scene might see a new patron when Mitchell Schwartz arrives in town on Thursday, May 10, for the Cleveland Browns’ rookie minicamp. The team selected him with the 37th overall pick in last week’s NFL Draft. “Matzah ball soup or a nice… Read more »

(N.Y. Jewish Week) — Many of the best comedians have had deeply troubled pasts. But Moshe Kasher, a rising 32-year-old comic and author of a new memoir, “Kasher in the Rye,” takes the old adage to a new level. He began psychotherapy at age 4 and started using hard… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Democrats and Republicans are readying for a potentially tough fight in Florida’s 22nd Congressional District in coastal Palm Beach and Broward counties — a potential bellwether race that could end up pitting two prominent local Jewish politicians against one another. Its national import notwithstanding, it’s also… Read more »