Posts By Jigsaw Digital

LOS ANGELES (The Jewish Journal) — Located in the northern part of Santa Barbara County, but as distant from chic Santa Barbara as one can imagine, Santa Maria is a blue-collar town dotted with fast-food and barbecue joints. In recent years its population, at least half of which is… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jewish service groups are telling their constituents to be on guard for a possible government shutdown or slowdown after Aug. 2, when the United States is scheduled to hit its debt ceiling. What that means is not yet clear: The government isn’t saying what it will… Read more »

Zumba instructors, including Shelley Engel, center, and Esther Goldberg, right, join the Phillie Phanatic in a performance for a charity fundraiser last summer. (Julia Elkin)

PHILADELPHIA (Jewish Exponent) — At age 54, Esther Goldberg has danced in front of 46,000 people at a sold-out Phillies game and behind a casino bar wearing little more than a see-through mesh shirt over a sparkly bra. This is what Zumba can do to an otherwise mild-mannered masseuse… Read more »

A local woman wheels her baby in front of the Auschwitz Jewish Center, in the heart of Oswiecim. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)

OSWIECIM, Poland (JTA) — Can a town that exists in the shadow of death transform itself into a place of normalcy? The question long has vexed Oswiecim, the town of 40,000 in southern Poland where the notorious Auschwitz death camp is located. For decades, residents and city leaders have… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — In the face of growing congressional concern over Middle Eastern extremism, some key Jewish Democrats are working to make sure President Obama has the leeway to dole out aid to Arab entities. The issue came to a head last week in the form of a State… Read more »

(JTA) — For decades after World War II, far-right political movements in Europe stirred up for Jews images of skinheads and Nazi storm troopers marching across the continent. But in recent years, as European xenophobia has focused on the exploding growth of Muslims on the continent, right-wing anti-Semitism has… Read more »

Flowers and candles outside the Domkirke Cathedral in Oslo serve as a memorial to bombing and shooting victims, July 25, 2011 (Alex Weisler).

BERLIN (JTA) — The confessed perpetrator in the attack in Norway that killed at least 76 people espoused a right-wing philosophy against Islam that also purports to be pro-Zionist. Anders Behring Breivik is charged with detonating a car bomb outside Oslo’s government headquarters, which houses the office of Norwegian… Read more »

MOSCOW (Tablet) — Blumi Lazar’s wedding was not an intimate affair. A thick white dek tichel completely covering her face, Blumi stood under a massive raised chuppah of indigo velvet and gold fringe, swaying ever so slightly next to her groom, Isaac Rosenfeld, before some 1,500 invited guests. Among… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The Conservative movement, through its Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, has taken a historic step in acknowledging that deaf and hard-of-hearing people are entitled to stand with the Jewish community as equals. Not only did the law committee vote to recognize the users of… Read more »

Rows of cottage cheese and other dairy products on display at a Tel Aviv grocery store. (Dina Kraft)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — For Israelis, cottage cheese is no mere dairy product. Whipped to exceptional creamy and airy perfection, it is a coveted staple of tables across the country. Israelis spend $440 million per year on cottage cheese. But now, with the price of a 9-ounce container climbing… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Among the issues the U.S. Supreme Court will consider when it reconvenes next October is whether an American born in Jerusalem may list his birthplace as Israel in his passport. That case probably will garner the most Jewish attention in a fall docket that includes several… Read more »

Moishe House Baltimore residents Jen Posner, left, and Mickey Rubin, wearing a Baltimore Orioles cap, host a rooftop barbecue for other young Baltimore Jews, May 19, 2011. (Moishe House Baltimore)

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — Ben Levinson, 28, was born and raised in St. Louis. He returned after college to find most of the Jewish friends he grew up with had moved away. That’s not unusual: St. Louis is one of many U.S. cities with shrinking Jewish populations and, as… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO (j weekly) — It’s a warm Sunday afternoon in the Berkeley hills, and if you look west from the road that abuts Tilden Park, the San Francisco skyline is about as clear as it gets. As with most nice days, the park is full of people —… Read more »

Participants in a 2011 Yeshiva University Alternative Break program in Nicaragua, run throught he American Jewish World Service, learn to connect volunteer service to their Jewish values. (American Jewish World)

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — Most young Jews do some kind of volunteer service, but few do it through Jewish agencies or connect it to Jewish values. Poverty, the environment, education and illiteracy are the areas that draw most young Jewish volunteers, with Israel-related work at the bottom of the… Read more »

Helping Palestinians deal with medical emergencies is a significant part of the job of IDF paramedics in the West Bank. (Linda Gradstein)

CARMEI TZUR, West Bank (JTA) — Yana Kisluk tosses her long ponytail over one shoulder and adjusts her M-16 over the other. The pretty 21-year-old, who wears diamond stud earrings and perfect eye makeup, looks like any other young Israeli doing her compulsory military service. As a paramedic in… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — One night back in 1985, businessman Bruce Slovin was walking home from a corporate board meeting with a lawyer named Joe Greenberger when Greenberger asked him about his involvement in the Jewish world. Slovin responded that he wasn’t at all active, so Greenberger invited him… Read more »

A DJ samples Jewish music from the Bimah as, at about 1 a.m., crowds visit an exhibit in the Old Synagogue on the Night of the synagogues. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) — Jews in Krakow have a new slogan — “Never Better.” The catchphrase is deliberately provocative, a blatant rejoinder to “Never Again,” the slogan long associated with Holocaust memory and the fight against anti-Semitic prejudice. It may be counterintuitive, acknowledges Jonathan Ornstein, the American-born director of… Read more »

Peter Levitt, co-owner of Sual's Restaurant and Deli in Berkeley, Calif., serving up some of the deli's grass-fed, sustainably produced meat. (Saul's Restaurant and Deli)

BERKELEY, Calif. (JTA) — Can a Jewish deli be a Jewish deli without pastrami? That’s the question Saul’s Restaurant and Deli in Berkeley is facing after refusing the delivery of a truckload of pastrami because it did not meet the deli’s sustainability standards. “We found out it is no… Read more »

Lisa Jackson Pulver, a Jewish member of the Aboriginal tribe called the Wiradjuri. (From "Hand and Hand: Jewish and Indigenous people working together" by Anne Sarzin and Lisa Miranda Sarzin.)

SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) — Lisa Jackson Pulver is not your average Australian Jew. Yes, she is one of this country’s 110,000 or so Members of the Tribe, but she is also a member of another tribe: an Aboriginal clan called the Wiradjuri. Jackson Pulver says she’s not the only… Read more »

The U.S. State Department warns that travelers to Saudi Arabia have reported that Israeli entry stamps such as this one may result in a denial of entry. The Saudis deny having such a policy. (Matthew Wilkinson via Creative Commons)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Saudi government wants you to know: It doesn’t ban visits by Jews. Whether the Saudis make travel difficult for Jews, particularly when it comes to those who have Israel stamps on their passports or come carrying religious items like tefillin, is another question entirely. The… Read more »