Posts By Jigsaw Digital

NEW YORK (JTA) — “Girls” begins with the conversation that many parents of 20-somethings dream of having someday real soon with their floundering children: No. More. Money. This is what the parents of 24-year-old Hannah Horvath, played by series creator, director and writer Lena Dunham, tell her over dinner.… Read more »

(Forward) — An upcoming haredi Orthodox mega-rally in New York about the dangers posed by the Internet has a promotional Twitter account. The event’s box office has an email address. Speeches will be live streamed. And one of the event’s organizers owns a Web marketing company specializing in search… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) – Israel’s security technologies were on display as the country hosted two separate international contingents. An Interpol European Regional Conference brought 110 senior law enforcement officers from 49 countries to Tel Aviv, while a homeland security conference drew 37 mayors from two dozen worldwide cities to sites… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Observing my kids playing, I notice how the same toy, no matter how many times they play with it, can reveal the most remarkable things. My daughter, with the vocabulary befitting a 1 1/2-year-old, will bring her ball over to me and point to a… Read more »

Sen. Richard Lugar, right, accompanies actor George Clooney with Sen. John Kerry for Clooney's testimonial on Sudan issues, in washington, D.C., March 14, 2012. Lugar's defeat in a primary election has pro-Israel activists worried about bipartisanship in Congress. (Medill DC via Creative Commons)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Richard Lugar was never considered to be one of Israel’s leading advocates on Capitol Hill. The veteran Republican senator from Indiana, who suffered a primary defeat last week after 35 years in office, is famously his own man. Lugar, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations… Read more »

Mitch Dorson

Mitch Dorson, 63, died unexpectedly on May 13, 2012. “His life was a story about a man standing for his principles,” says Rabbi Joseph Weizenbaum, who worked with Mr. Dorson at Temple Emanu-El. “He never backed off” of those principles teaching social studies, first at Catalina Foothills High School… Read more »

Ron Ben-Israel, a former dancer, has gone on to become the host of Food Network's "Sweet Genius." (Food Network)

TEANECK, N.J. (JTA) — As the minutes on the clock tick away, the chefs run about their kitchens furiously trying to complete their Taj Mahal-themed desserts. “What have I got for you now?” booms the thickly accented master pastry chef Ron Ben-Israel as he overlooks the chefs’ workstations. “Another… Read more »

Pilgrims enjoying the Hiloula celebration at the El Ghriba Synagogue in Tunisia, May 2012.

DJERBA, Tunisia (JTA) — Two thousand years ago, a mysterious woman who was unable to talk arrived on this island. Every sick person she touched was healed. Although she died when her wooden house caught fire, her body remained intact and did not burn. That’s a local legend. Another… Read more »

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, left, and Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol engage in The Great Debate: Election 2012 at the American Jewish Committee's Global Forum at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, May 4, 2012. (Ron Sachs/CNP)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Simmering beneath the presidential season’s familiar refrains of support for Israel is a passionate partisan argument over how best to confront Iran and deal with the new Middle East. The Jewish election debate season was launched informally on May 4 at the annual American Jewish Committee… Read more »

An anti-government demonstration in Budapest, December 2011. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)

BUDAPEST (JTA) — The debate over anti-Semitism in Hungary has sharpened since the anti-Israel, anti-Jewish and anti-Roma (Gypsy) Jobbik movement entered Parliament two years ago as the country’s third largest party. Seeking scapegoats and channeling paranoia at a time of severe economic, social and political woes, Jobbik’s lawmakers regularly… Read more »

Matthew Koven, left, and Roger Ramkissoon stand next to their new L.A. deli truck. (Edmon J. Rodman)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — It’s not a dinner for schmucks but a lunch served by one. That may sound harsh, but how else to introduce a new food truck rolling on the streets of Los Angeles called “Schmuck with a Truck”? On only his eighth day of business, the… Read more »

Rabbi Tamas Vero and his wife, Linda Ban Vero, outside Budapest's Frakel Leo street synagogue, where they head a growing congregation mainly made up of young families like themselves. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)

BUDAPEST (JTA) — Linda Ban is a rebbetzin, but with a mass of curly hair and chunky rings on the fingers of both hands, she hardly fits the stereotype of a Central European rabbi’s wife. A mother of two in her mid-30s, Ban is married to Tamas Vero, the… Read more »

LOS ANGELES (Jewish Journal) — David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer, screenwriters of Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest film, “The Dictator,” were bantering in the comic actor’s office as Alec Berg, their co-writer, joined in by speakerphone — he was home babysitting his young daughter. Baron Cohen, star of the prankster… Read more »

Pawel Bramson, left, at the Jewish cemetary in Warsaw. (Kuba Wyszynski)

WARSAW (JTA) — Fifteen years ago, Pawel Bramson was a skinhead shouting anti-Semitic and racist slogans during soccer matches. He hated Jews and blacks – simply, he says, because you need someone to blame for what’s wrong in the world. These days he keeps kosher, wears the long beard… Read more »

President Barack Obama participates in an interview with Robin Roberts of ABC's "Good Morning America," in the Cabinet Room of the White House, May 9, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — As soon as President Obama wrapped up the television interview in which he endorsed same-sex marriage, he called an evangelical minister who advises him to offer a heads up. Jack Lew, the White House chief of staff, made a similar call to the Orthodox Union. The… Read more »

Jacob Ostreicher (Courtesy Miriam Ungar)

NEW YORK (JTA) – Supporters say he’s an innocent man caught up in the tentacles of a corrupt Latin American regime. Authorities in Bolivia, however, allege that he’s a shady businessman with ties to drug dealers and money launderers. What’s certain is that Jacob Ostreicher, a 53-year-old Chasidic Jew… Read more »

A haredi Orthodox man watching Israeli soldiers as an army ceremony at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Feb. 22, 2012. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90/JTA)

(JTA) – Israel’s new unity government may not alter Jerusalem’s strategy for curbing Iran’s nuclear weapons program or do much to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It could, however, dramatically change something at home about which a huge number of Israelis care deeply: haredi Orthodox exemptions from military service.… Read more »

WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. (JTA) — A few months after my first child was born, I went to a bookstore to buy a few books that I thought needed to be on the bookshelf of my new baby’s nursery. Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” was one of those… Read more »

Gertrude Berg as Molly Goldberg of "The Goldbergs." (CBS Television)

NEW YORK (JTA) — What do Golda Meir, Natalie Portman and Aviva Shalit have in common? They’re all on JTA’s Top Jewish Moms list for 2012. With Mother’s Day on Sunday, we present our select group (in alphabetical order but for our final choice): Bella Abzug — The first Jewish woman elected… Read more »

Harold Grinspoon, the founder of PJ Library, reads one of the program's books with a gaggle of children. (PJ Library)

NEW YORK (JTA) — PJ Library wants to come between parents and children — literally. Every month, PJ Library mails free Jewish-themed children’s books to nearly 100,000 households in North America with a grand ambition: that somewhere between Dr. Seuss and the Berenstain Bears, a child may turn to… Read more »