Posts By Jigsaw Digital

WASHINGTON (JTA) — They may have scored a victory at UNESCO, but the Palestinians are running into new obstacles on their push for statehood recognition at the United Nations. The effort to pursue the issue at the U.N. Security Council has encountered a stumbling block in Bosnia, where the… Read more »

NEW YORK (Forward) — When a recent online expose revealed that women on a New York City-franchised bus were required to sit in the back, those who seemed to be least outraged were the women who actually ride the bus and live in the two heavily Orthodox Brooklyn neighborhoods… Read more »

A destroyed Jewish clothing store in Magdeburg, Germany, after Kristallnacht, Nov. 11, 1938. (H. Frederick, Hanover)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Before it was called Kristallnacht, it was known simply as “the pogrom.” Designated “the night of broken glass,” the 14-hour wave of Nazi violence on Nov. 9-10, 1938 left hundreds of Jewish storefronts and synagogues across Germany and parts of Austria in shards and splinters,… Read more »

Joshua Knobel, shown at Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan in 2007, says he wanted to "help people figure out how to live their lives with purpose and intent." (Joshua Knobel)

BALTIMORE, Md. (JTA) — When West Point’s Jewish chaplain left the academy during Joshua Knobel’s freshman year, Knobel filled in for him, running Jewish prayer services at the military school’s chapel. In the years following his 2001 graduation, Knobel led services more than 6,000 miles east while deployed in… Read more »

The late philanthropist Mendel Kaplan showing former South Africa President Nelson Mandela around the South African Jewish Museum, which was opened by Mandela in 2000. (Shawn Benjamin/Ark Images)

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (JTA) – When anti-apartheid activist Lorna Levy first became involved in politics as a student in the late 1950s, she remembers being the target of hostility from the Jewish community in her native South Africa. In the 1960s, she and her husband, Leon, made their… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) is determined to return to Congress. Giffords, who is recovering from being shot in the head in January, reveals in a book she co-writes with her husband, Mark Kelly, that she plans to keep her job, according to a report Friday by… Read more »

Danny Danon, a Knesset member and a leader of the settlement movement, making a point to Herman Cain after leading the Republican presidential candidate on a tour of the tunnels beneath Jerusalem's Western Wall, August 2011. (George Lange Studios)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Call Herman Cain the crash-course pro-Israel candidate. Since stumbling in May on a question about Palestinians and the right of return, the one-time pizza executive who recently rocketed to the top of GOP presidential polls has visited Israel and read up about the Jewish state. “Mr.… Read more »

UNESCO designated Tel Aviv's "White City" -- its 4,000 Bauhaus buildings -- a heritage site in 2003, facilitating funds for rehabilitation projects. (David Lisbona via Creative Commons.)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The immediate consequence of UNESCO’s vote to grant the Palestinians membership is clear: A cutoff of American funding for the U.N.  agency governing the protection of cultures and sharing of scientific knowledge, which stands to lose roughly a fifth of its budget. What’s less certain is… Read more »

Rafael Medoff

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Most American Christian leaders strongly condemned the Kristallnacht pogrom that the Nazis carried out against Germany’s Jews 73 years ago next week, when hundreds of synagogues were torched, the windows of thousands of Jewish businesses were smashed, 100 Jews were murdered and 30,000 more were dragged… Read more »

Secular protesters march against Islamism in Tunis ahead of the Oct. 24 elections in Tunisia, Oct. 14, 2011. The placard reads "Free to speak to say nothing." (Houda Trablesi for Maghrebia, via Creative Commons)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — It was an orderly, peaceful election — a rarity in the Arab world. And it was won by Islamists. How observers view the Tunisian elections and what they mean for the West, Israel and the North African country’s tiny Jewish community depends in part on which… Read more »

Version Jew.0 Is your Yiddish rusty? Want to whip up a kosher culinary masterpiece? Trying to remember which prayer to say as you cast off your sins on Rosh Hashanah? Don’t worry—there’s an app for it! Oy! Ever wonder when it’s OK to toss out an “oy”? The opportunities,… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — We have decided to take a journey. We will take the Food Stamp Challenge and live for one week on an average SNAP (food stamp) benefit of $31.50 per week. We are organizing and encouraging others to join us. Yet we hear one question again and… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Cardinal Kurt Koch, the Vatican’s key representative to Jews, is making his first visit to New York, home to the largest Jewish community outside of Israel. The cardinal, appointed president of the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews in 2010, has an opportunity,… Read more »

Unveiling of the monument on Chaplains Hill in Arlington National Cemetary to 14 Jewish chaplains who died in service to the United States during World War II, the early years of the Cold War and in Southeast Asia. (Karen Wendkos)

ARLINGTON, Va. (JTA) — Fourteen Jewish military chaplains who gave their lives in service to their country finally have a place of honor in Arlington National Cemetery. Family members of the fallen chaplains were joined Monday by community leaders, politicians, and current and retired military personnel for a ceremony… Read more »

In this undated photo David Gerbi poses in front of Sla dar Bishi, the synagogue in Tripoli that he hopes to renovate. Gerbi, an Italian Jew born in Libya, played a central role in 2002 in the rapprochement between Moammar Gadhafi and Libyan Jews. (Courtesy David Gerbi)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Now it can be told: For the last decade or so, the Jews had secret back channels to Moammar Gadhafi. What led the pro-Israel community into a careful relationship with Gadhafi 10 years ago were considerations of U.S. national interests, Israel’s security needs and the claims… Read more »

Scott Shay in his book on energizing American Jewry says his call for a cyclical 18-year Bar/Bat Mitzvah captured the most attention on his promotional tour. (Howard Roy Katz, Art Box Studio)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Remember that 2009 episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” when as part of a plot to coax Michael “Kramer” Richards to go along with a “Seinfeld” reunion, Larry David’s African-American housemate, Leon Black, pretends to be the Jewish accountant Danny Duberstein? To sell the cover story,… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — In her final months as a political science major at the University of Pittsburgh, Susanna Zlotnikov had a positive outlook about landing a job. But as the months passed and her network of contacts led only to dead ends, Zlotnikov decided she needed a backup.… Read more »

Tiffany Shlain incorporated her father into her documentary "Connected" after he was diagnosed with brain cancer.

NEW YORK (JTA) — Filmmaker Tiffany Shlain is certainly no Luddite. She co-founded the Webby Awards in 1996 to showcase excellence on the then-fledgling Internet. Yet 15 years later she, like many of us, is ambivalent about the technology that allows people to connect to the web 24 hours… Read more »

MONTCLAIR, N.J. (JTA) — We land at Ben Gurion Airport in the heat of winter, on the first day of Chanukah.  At 11 a.m. Dec. 2, already it is 82 degrees in Tel Aviv — unusual weather for the rainy season in Israel. And it will get hotter. Much… Read more »

(Jewish Ideas Daily) — In the middle decades of the 20th century they were called “mushroom synagogues.” They popped up in the waning days of summer to provide High Holidays services, then disappeared at the conclusion of Yom Kippur. Today, “mushroom synagogues” are again in vogue — but with… Read more »