Posts By Jigsaw Digital

In "Jodie's Passover Adventure," Jodie and her American cousin Zach discover ancient secrets on their exploration of Hezekiah's Tunnel in the Old City of Jerusalem. (Courtesy Kar-Ben Publishing)

BOSTON (JTA) — A vacuum-like robot that cleans the house and a spunky Israeli girl on an underground adventure in Jerusalem are among the characters featured in new children’s books for Passover. This year’s crop offers more than the typical retellings of the Exodus story. Two books have Passover… Read more »

Geneva – Dr. Raz Somech is one of the main figures in the deeply moving documentary “Precious Life,” which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2011 and serves as a powerful image of hope in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2008, a four month-old baby from Gaza, Mohammed Abu… Read more »

NEW YORK (N.Y. Jewish Week) — The novelist Jonathan Safran Foer grew up with a fairly typical American Passover. His father would use the Maxwell House Haggadah, supplemented with his own pamphlet of writings, and lead the annual Foer Seder. But nine years ago, sitting at his family Seder… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Though the death last weekend of John Demjanjuk brought a close to the seemingly never-ending quest for justice in the case of a man long accused of being a Nazi war criminal, it also brought a premature end to the legal battle over his legacy. Though Demjanjuk,… Read more »

Ozar Hatorah, a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, was the site of a shooting Monday that killed four people. (Ozar Hatorah)

PARIS (JTA) — When Arie Bensemhoun, a Jewish community leader in Toulouse, woke up Tuesday morning, he thought for a moment that the horrific shooting of three children and a rabbi at a local Jewish school might have been just a bad dream. “Then the reality hit and I… Read more »

Some new Haggadahs for this Passover: "Sharing the Journey," the "New American Haggadah" and "Journey to Freedom."

SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. (JTA) — Leading a Seder for the first time this year? There’s an app for that. Entries in the annual stream of new Haggadahs this year include a Reform version that comes in hardcover, paperback and iPad app editions. Two others  feature a gorgeously designed Haggadah… Read more »

South Carolina Rep. Alan Clemmons with a group of Israeli soldiers at Masada during his visit to Israel, November 2011. (Alan Clemmons via Twitter)

NEW YORK (JTA) — The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a hotly debated issue — but not in the Florida Legislature. Both houses of the state’s Legislature voted unanimously in February to stake out a bold position on the issue — but it’s not entirely clear what, exactly, Florida lawmakers were… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Passover celebrates the exodus of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, their wandering in the desert for 40 years, and their ultimate deliverance to the Promised Land. But a contemporary observer might be forgiven for imagining the holiday marks a different sort of migration:… Read more »

Sol Factor, who was given up by a mother who was in a displaced persons' camp, is looking for information about his family tree. (Courtesy Sol Factor)

The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE (JTA) — Sol Factor recalls a happy childhood in circa-1950s Boston suburbia with his physician-father Joseph, teacher-mother Bernice and younger sister Rachel. His first life, as Meier Pollak — born in 1946 near a displaced persons’… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is waiting and watching when it comes to Iran — although for how long, no one knows. Analysts and Jewish organizational officials who speak with Israeli and U.S. government say Netanyahu came away from his meeting last week with President Obama… Read more »

(N.Y. Jewish Week) — The recent celebration of Purim offers an appropriate moment to recall a man known for a time as “America’s Haman.” That Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s story ended very differently than the story of Haman in the Book of Esther reminds us how America itself is… Read more »

A volley of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip was intercepted by the Iron Dome system near the Israeli town of Ashdod area on Sunday morning March 11, 2012. (Flash90/JTA)

JERUSALEM (JTA) –  As southern Israel was barraged by rockets for a fourth straight day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was hitting back “strongly and decisively,” and its Iron Dome anti-missile defense system was intercepting many of the rockets coming from the Gaza Strip. “The IDF is continuing… Read more »

Yair Miller, left, and Ahron Guttman seek comfort from their fathers after losing the championship game, March 3, 2012. (Samantha Steinberg)

FORT WORTH, Texas (JTA) — In Texas, they say, high school athletics are a religion. But last weekend the saying took on a new meaning. The Robert M. Beren Academy, a small Modern Orthodox school in Houston, had captured national headlines during the week. Its boys’ basketball team had… Read more »

Ari Mandel at his wedding in Monsey, N.Y., August 2001. (Courtesy Ari Mandel)

NEW YORK (Yiddish Forward) — When Ari Mandel arrived at Army boot camp at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., in June 2007, it was a scorcher. His fellow soldiers, who had been accustomed to wearing airy shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops during the summer, groaned as they donned knee-high woolen socks,… Read more »

BERLIN (JTA) — A new documentary is shining light on Germany’s neo-Nazi music scene and the role it plays in cultivating a violent far-right subculture. The film “Blut muss Fliessen” (Blood Must Flow) looks at the neo-Nazi music scene in Germany, as well as in Austria, Italy and Hungary.… Read more »

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama meet in the White House Oval Office to talk about Iran and other issues, March 5, 2012. (Ron Kampeas)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may not have bridged their differences on how to deal with Iran, but each managed to give the other a measure of reassurance. In his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Obama held his ground, declining… Read more »

Demonstrators in Moscow protest Vladimir Putin's re-election, including one carrying a sign reading "We are not an opposition, we are your employers!" with the word "fired" over a drawing of Putin's face, March 5, 2012. (Freedom House via CC)

(JTA) — With Vladimir Putin’s re-election as president of Russia pretty much a foregone conclusion, the question facing Russia was never what would result from last weekend’s election but what would happen after the vote. Thousands of protesters turned out Monday in a Moscow saturated with police and soldiers… Read more »

Last month, a contingent of leaders from the North American Conservative movement returned to the United States. All the members of this mission, rabbis, congregation leaders and philanthropists, had already been to Israel dozens of times. They are major activists in Jewish Federations, AIPAC, Hadassah, you name it. They… Read more »

Ruth Feigenbaum, founder of the Support Group of Families of the Terminally Ill in Zumbabwe, with AIDS orphan Ruth Thabini Dube. (Courtesy SGOFOTI)

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (JTA) — Two years after moving to Zimbabwe from South Africa 20 years ago, Ruth Feigenbaum noticed that her gardener, James Phiri, was losing weight and looking ill. With the help of a physician friend, Phiri was diagnosed: Like nearly one in seven Zimbabweans, he was… Read more »

(JTA) — Thirty years ago, a Jewish woman experiencing domestic violence had few places to turn. Community leaders strongly resisted acknowledging violence for fear that it would harm marriages and break up families. Few services existed for women seeking support in a Jewish setting. Prior to 1994, the U.S.… Read more »