Posts By Jigsaw Digital

Evan Kaufmann, a U.S.-born hockey player whose great-grandparents were killed in the Holocaust, is now representing the German national team. (Courtesy Eishockey Magazin)

WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. (JTA) — More than 65 years ago, Evan Kaufmann’s great-grandparents were murdered in the Auschwitz death camp. Now he is taking the ice for the German national hockey team. Following a successful hockey career at the University of Minnesota, Kaufmann tried out for several professional clubs in… Read more »

Zidan Badran, mayor of the Israeli portion of the Arab town of Barta'a, stands on the seam that separates the Israeli part of town from its West Bank portion. (Linda Gradstein)

BARTA’A, West Bank (JTA) — In these days of frozen peace negotiations, most Israelis and Palestinians have little contact. Palestinians need a special permit to enter Israel, and Israelis need army permission to enter the parts of the West Bank controlled by the Palestinian Authority. In fact, just a… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — What were the Jews doing becoming so involved in a debate over contraception? It was a question that more than one Jewish official asked themselves over recent months as tensions between the Obama administration and leaders of the Catholic Church rose to the boiling point over… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Iran and Israel appear to be locked in an assassination contest. Israeli leaders blamed Iran for two assassination attempts late Sunday and early Monday — in Tbilisi, Georgia, and in New Delhi, India. The bomb in Tbilisi was disabled before it could be activated, and the… Read more »

Discount Purim basket with a rich theme: Products purchased at a 99 Cents Only Store connect to characters in the Purim story. (Edmon J. Rodman)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Falling between the giving season of Chanukah and the getting season of tax refunds, Purim time finds households like mine searching for ways to keep holiday expenses down to earth without losing the mirth. What with the cost of fancy, professionally made kosher shalach manot… Read more »

Alan Dershowitz, right, speaking at the University of Pennsylvania in a bid to galvanize pro-Israel students there, Feb. 2, in light of the expected anti-Israel message expected at the BDS conference on the Penn campus. Political journalist Robert Traynham served as the moderator for the program. (Scott Weiner)

(Jewish Exponent) — Did the National Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Conference at the University of Pennsylvania over the weekend backfire for organizers and illustrate the strength of the pro-Israel community on campus? Or did BDS speakers like Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah reveal how much pro-Israel students need to… Read more »

The Moshav band performs original world music, folk and rock in Hebrew and English, as well as "Shlomo tunes" of the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. (Courtesy Moshav Band)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — With his yarmulke, ritual fringes and lyrics occasionally borrowed from ancient texts, Grammy-nominated reggae star Matisyahu may be the most publicly Jewish performer in the mainstream music scene. But he’s not the only one. Growing ranks of Jewishly committed performers are finding success on the national… Read more »

Jerusalem – Just days after long-time Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiators Yitzhak Molcho and Saeb Erekat clashed yet again at a meeting in Jordan, thousands of young people from across the Middle East gathered together online for an event which set a new standard for mutual understanding and partnership. Conferences bringing… Read more »

Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinians' prime minister in the Gaza Strip, meeting with Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa in the Bahraini capital of Manama, Feb. 4. (Flash 90)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Is Hamas trying to change its stripes? Terrorist attacks against Israelis appear to be on pause, and rocket fire from Gaza is down significantly. The Hamas leader in Damascus, Khaled Meshaal, is trying to distance himself from the Assad regime and align Hamas with the forces… Read more »

(N.Y. Jewish Week) — The emergence of Hebrew charter schools — publicly funded schools that teach Hebrew language and aspects of Jewish culture — has been a controversial development in recent years. Required by law to be open to all regardless of religion or ethnicity, and prohibited from promoting… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — A spate of recent media reports has discussed the inclusion of ultranationalists in the Russian protest movement. Jewish organizations, sensitive to the fragility of a newly emergent Russian civil society and Jewish community, need to speak out against this inclusion. Ultranationalism and xenophobia are not unique… Read more »

(Jewish Ideas Daily) — News flash: Top-secret intelligence memos written during the last years of the Bush administration describe covert activities — in intelligence parlance, a “false flag” operation — by Israeli Mossad officers, posing as American CIA agents, who recruited assassins from Jundallah, an obscure Pakistan-based Sunni Muslim… Read more »

(Jewish Ideas Daily) — Some days, I think back 25 years to my high-school French course, where I first encountered the concept of the juste milieu — the happy medium — and the difficulty of achieving it. Why is it so elusive? Why do I often feel caught betwixt… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Birth control is rapidly gaining steam as an election-year wedge issue, with Jewish advocates lobbying out front and behind the scenes in what is shaping up as a clash between calls for individual freedom and religious liberty. Several Jewish groups and lawmakers played a behind-the-scenes role… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Ukrainian Jewish leader and real estate mogul Alexander L. Levin came to New York last month to launch the latest international Jewish organization with a grandiose name. Called the World Forum for Russian Jewry, this one aims to harness the power of Russian-speaking Jews the… Read more »

NEW YORK (N.Y. Jewish Week) — The issue of who can become a Jew through conversion is controversial and critical to determining the essence of the Jewish character, and as timely as the current headlines from Jerusalem. But as two rabbinic scholars — one Reform and one Conservative —… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The still-new recycling center in the Givat Shaul neighborhood of Jerusalem is fairly quiet on a crisp winter afternoon. Several people drive in to drop off their recycling — from old printers and batteries to aluminum pans, plastic containers and cardboard — in bins clearly labeled… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO (j weekly) — Ronni Zehavi got quite a Chanukah present in December. On Dec. 11, he sold Contendo, a Web services company he co-founded in Israel four years ago, to Akamai, a major global high-tech player. Sale price: $268 million. Score one for the startup nation. Contendo… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The link between hatred of Jews and of the only Jewish state often requires little conjecture. This is particularly so in the Arab world, where cultivated popular anti-Semitism has been ignored abroad as an impetus of regional conflict. For evidence that anti-Israel sentiment in the Middle… Read more »

"Kosher Cake" is one of two new albums by Shlock Rock marking the group's 25th anniversary. (Shlock Rock)

STAMFORD, Conn. (JTA) — Before the Maccabeats created a sensation on YouTube with their Chanukah song, and before the scores of individuals recorded Jewish parodies on video, and before Jewish outreach organizations used popular music to connect with unaffiliated Jews, there was Lenny Solomon and Shlock Rock. For 25… Read more »