Posts By Jigsaw Digital

NEW YORK (JTA) — The threat of the infiltration of Sharia, or Islamic law, into the American court system is one of the more pernicious conspiracy theories to gain traction in our country in recent years. The notion that Islam is insidiously making inroads in the United States through… Read more »

Passers-by glancing at looted stores in a London neighborhood, Aug. 9, 2011. (Creative Commons)

(JTA) – While some Jews in London marked Tisha b’Av on Tuesday by lamenting the burning of the Holy Temples on that day some two millennia ago, other London Jews watched as their city burned amid widespread rioting. “Everyone is shocked,” Joel Braunold, a lifelong Londoner, told JTA in… Read more »

Tributes at the Oklahoma City bombing memorial on July 8, 2011. Federal authorities say concerns about Islamist extremists since then have not distracted them from right-wing extremism. (Kyle Monahan, Creative Commons)

  WASHINGTON (JTA) — With the Norway attacks fresh in mind and the 10-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks fast approaching, are U.S. authorities paying attention to the right kinds of threats? The fear is that with polarization intensifying in America, extremists might mark the 10th anniversary of… Read more »

Sen. Joe Lieberman, right, shown visiting special operations forces in Afghanistan on July 4, 2011, says his strong Jewish faith leads him to forge an independent path, striking aliiances with both parties. [Sgt. Lizette Hart, U.s. Military Public Affairs, via Creative Commons]

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Call Joe Lieberman the unlikely evangelical. The Independent senator from Connecticut — and the best-known Orthodox Jew in American politics — is probably more cognizant than most of his Jewish congressional colleagues about rabbinical interdictions against encouraging non-Jews to mimic Jewish ritual. Yet here he is,… Read more »

Shay Shem Tobi, left, and Levy Forchheimer enjoying the cocktail party and comedy night thrown in honor of visiting Israeli soldiers by the Manhattan Jewish Experience, July 2011. (JTA)

NEW YORK (JTA) — When Israel wanted to help its troops, it sent them to America. Last month, 15 former soldiers selected by the Israel Defense Forces traveled to New York for a weeklong program to treat lingering trauma from their combat during the 2006 Lebanon War with Hezbollah.… Read more »

Onlookers peer at the archeological dig and planned museum site on the Rathaus square in downtown Colgone. (Alex Weisler)

COLOGNE, Germany (JTA) — This city in western Germany is banking its future on its Jewish past. But at present, the investment is exacting a heavy price: $52 million, to be exact. Following a divisive decades-long battle, Cologne’s municipal government voted recently to allocate that sum toward the construction… Read more »

SHILOH, West Bank (JTA) — Yisrael Medad remembers when just eight families lived in the red-roofed homes in this Jewish settlement deep in the hills of the West Bank. Now some 2,500 Israelis live here, and Shiloh has playgrounds, schools and a yeshiva. The red-roofed homes sprawl over several… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — I have no patience for survival Judaism. Whenever I hear someone talk about what Jews must do in order to “survive,” I head for the door. Joel Alperson has joined the long list of Jewish communal leaders offering a formula for Jewish survival. Along the… Read more »

OMAHA, Neb. (JTA) — At least a portion of my hometown of Omaha, Neb., may well be under water in the coming days. Pumps are in place at various locations, including at a nuclear power plant located not far from town. The Missouri River, which borders our city, has… Read more »

VIENNA, Austria (JTA) — The symbolism was unmistakable. Four thousand Jews stood just a few hundred yards away from the spot where a quarter-million Austrians cheered Adolf Hitler in March 1938 as he announced Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria. This time, however, the Jews had come to celebrate, as… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — When Mitchell Ross was a boy, he remembers his grandfather hanging out with the men’s club at his Conservative synagogue. “I always felt it was something older Jewish men were involved in, the over-60s club,” said Ross, a 39-year-old cardiologist in Phoenix, Ariz. Today, Ross… Read more »

Kevin Youkilis

PHILADELPHIA (Jewish Exponent) — Kevin Youkilis says he truly doesn’t know what he would do if faced with the same dilemma as Hank Greenberg, Sandy Koufax and Shawn Green. What if the Boston Red Sox are scheduled for a post-season game on Yom Kippur, which begins on Friday night,… Read more »

A screen shot of C-Span counting votes in the U.S. House of Representatives for a debt ceiling deal on Aug. 1, 2011, just as Rep. Gabrielle Giffords enters the chamber to cast her first vote since she was shot on Jan. 8. Giffords voted for the deal. (Philip Bump via Creative Commons)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Even before the debt deal was signed Tuesday in Washington, U.S. Jewish groups and recipients of government largesse were asking the same question: Who’s going to get cut? It’s still too early to say. But the new “super committee” created to hash out the details of… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Does Glenn Beck get Jews? It depends on whom you ask – to a degree – but it also seems to depend on the day of the week. Here he is on the night of July 19: “The Jewish people have been chased out of almost… Read more »

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (P.K.Weis/southwest photobank.com)

WASHINGTON – U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords returned to Congress today to vote in favor of legislation that will avoid a default by the U.S. government. It was the first vote she has cast since she was shot and critically wounded on Jan. 8 while meeting with her constituents in… Read more »

Amy Winehouse, shown at a June 2007 rock festival in France, foretold her own fate in "Back to Black," says Dvora Meyers, when she sang, "I tread a troubled track/My odds are stacked/I go back to black." (V. Gable -- Festival Eurockeenes)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Late last year, I spent the better part of a month working on a lengthy profile on Amy Winehouse, the British Jewish retro soul singer who tragically died over the weekend at 27. It was in the doldrums of this process, which included reading a… Read more »

BERLIN (JTA) — Aviv Russ stands behind a console with his headphones on and speaks into a large microphone. “We’re here: ‘Kol Berlin,’ the German-Israeli radio program. Shabbat shalom!” says Russ, 34, an Israeli expatriate. Russ has been on the radio in Berlin nearly every Friday for about three… Read more »

Trees left standing by Joplin High School following the May 22, 2011 tornado collected debris from the heavily damaged school, June 4, 2011. [John Daves/U.S. Army via Creative Commons]

NEW YORK (JTA) – When a tornado devastated the small city of Joplin, Mo., in late May, the city’s lone synagogue was left untouched — at least, physically. Bu tthen came the flood. Not as water, but in the form of phone calls from across the United States from… Read more »

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) — In Austria and Poland recently, I couldn’t seem to get away from students, scholars and just plain interested folks who were taking or teaching summer programs in Jewish studies. I myself spoke at a three-day “summer academy” in Vienna where more than 100 members of… Read more »

PITTSBURGH ( The Jewish Chronicle) — The students of Northern Cambria High School often walked by the 85-year-old deserted synagogue, but never paid it much attention. Some did not even know what it was. But all that has changed. And in a big way. For the past year, 15… Read more »