Posts By Jigsaw Digital

Randy Altschuler, a Republican who holds a slim lead in his suburban New York congressional district, campaigning this summer with Rep. Eric Cantor, currently the only GOP Jewish lawmaker in the Congress. (Courtesy Randy Altschuler for Congress)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The sharpest signal of what last week’s elections meant for Jews came not from Washington but from New Orleans, Nova Scotia and Australia. In New Orleans, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech Monday calling for moving beyond sanctions to mounting a “credible military threat”… Read more »

Providence Mayor David Cicilline, shown here welcoming the U.S. Army Band in July 2010, becomes the third openly gay Jewish member of the U.S. Congress with his Election Day victory. (Photo courtesy U.S. Army Band)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — A historic Republican sweep of the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday has propelled Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the minority whip, to the verge of becoming the highest-ranking Jewish lawmaker in U.S. political history. “We are excited for Eric Cantor to become the next House Majority… Read more »

Members of the New Israel fund express their desires in two languages during Jon Stewarts Rally for Sanity in Washington, Oct. 30, 2010. NIF)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — When “Saturday Night Live” alum “Father Guido Sarducci,” delivering the benediction at Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity, ran through a list of religions seeking the true faith, Judaism received the biggest applause. That didn’t surprise Rivka Burstein-Stern. “There were a lot of Jews there,” she… Read more »

Noach Braun, left, and Gadi Yarkoni practice runningtied to each other in preparation for the New York Marathon, July 2010. (Courtesy of Michael J. Leventhal)

NEW YORK (JTA) — When Noach Braun and Gadi Yarkoni run this year’s New York City marathon on Nov. 7, they’ll be tied together at the hip — literally. Yarkoni, an Israeli who lost his sight during combat in Lebanon 15 years ago, will be tethered by a strap… Read more »

U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, shown speaking at the 2009 General assembly of the Jewish Federations of North American, is poised to shepherd the GOP to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives. (Robert A. Cumins/ Jewish Federations of North America)

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Eric Cantor has spent a lifetime relishing wearing the other hat. Among Jews, the Republican congressional whip from Richmond, Va., likes to play the genteel Southern conservative, the posture that won over his wife, a socially liberal banker from New York. Among southerners, he’s the nice… Read more »

BERLIN (JTA) — Geert Wilders, the rock star of European politics, is riding the crest of a populist tsunami. As the pro-Israel founder of Holland’s Party of Freedom lets loose recently in Berlin, shouting that Islam is a threat to Germany’s identity, democracy and prosperity, his audience of 500… Read more »

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — On Halloween, the anniversary of his death, Harry Houdini will be back on stage. The Jewish Museum in New York is opening a new exhibition, “Houdini: Art and Magic,” on Oct. 29, and curator Brooke Kamin Rapaport says the entrance gallery will feature a replica… Read more »

DAYTON, Ohio (Dayton Jewish Observer) — Hagit Limor says a key reason she became a journalist was her family history. Her father is a Holocaust survivor from Poland. “My father is the victim of a crime that went unreported by the media for seven years,” she says. “No one… Read more »

Activist Ed Rosenthal, shown in an undated photo in a marijuana greenhouse, says "Jews have a special affinity to marijuana." photo courtesy of Ed Rosenthal)

OAKLAND, Calif. (JTA) — Ed Rosenthal has been working to legalize marijuana in California since he moved to the state in 1972. Vindication may finally be at hand for the Bronx-born former yippie. On Nov. 2, California voters will consider Proposition 19, a ballot initiative to legalize the cultivation… Read more »

Torah scribes Linda Coppleson, Rabbi Chana Klebansky and Rachel Reichhardt, l-r, discuss the placement of text on a panel before it is sewn onto the rest of the scroll, Oc.t 13, 2010 in Seattle. (Joel Magalnick/JT news)

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — It took seven years to write and just a few days to sew together, but on Oct. 15 the first Torah scroll written entirely by a group of women was attached to its wooden poles and declared complete. The ceremony was held at Seattle’s Kadima… Read more »

Members of an aliyah group from the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement from Toronto, Montreal and Detroit at a summer camp in 1949, not long before many of them would immigrate to Israel. (Courtesy of Ted Friedgut)

KIBBUTZ GALON, Israel (JTA) – In 1952, a 20-year-old with bright blue eyes who had never seen much of life outside of the Bronx, N.Y., mounted a kibbutz tractor armed with a rifle to plow wheat and sorghum fields bordering the Gaza Strip. Saul Adelson would live in Israel… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) – The likely prospect of Republican control of at least one chamber of Congress has triggered broad speculation about the remainder of President Obama’s time in the White House, Republican bids for the presidency in 2012 — and the very course of the nation, if not the… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs are launching a multimillion-dollar joint initiative to combat anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns. The JFNA and the rest of the Jewish federation system have agreed to invest $6 million over the… Read more »

Folk singer Pete Seeger, in green, records a song at his home in Beacon, N.Y., in May 2010 for an Israeli-organized peace rally. He is accompanied by Walker Rumpf on guitar and Rava Institute for Environmental alumni Zack Korenstein and Sarah Schuldenfrei. (Michael Hardgrove)

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — No one tells Pete Seeger what to do. At 91, the iconic folk singer has penned hundreds of protest songs, railing against everything from the Vietnam War to global warming. He was blacklisted in the 1950s, he slept under the stars with striking farmers and… Read more »

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is facing Tea-Party challenger Sharron Angle. (Brian Finifter)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Talk to veteran campaign watchers about this year’s congressional races, and within seconds they will tell you that they’ve never before seen elections quite like these. “We’ve never seen a cycle where there’s been this many races this close to an election and you don’t know… Read more »

Jerry Seinfeld will emcee the Nov. 13, 2010 gala to celebrate the official unveiling of the renovated National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. Courtesy of NMAJH

NEW YORK (JTA) — Two of the country’s most famous Jewish performers will highlight the opening of one of the most ambitious Jewish museum projects in years. Jerry Seinfeld will emcee and Bette Midler will headline a Nov. 13 gala to celebrate the official unveiling of the renovated National… Read more »

San Diego Jewish Academy helmets feature the Hebrew letter lamed-shaped L for Lions. (Edmon J. Rodman)

SAN DIEGO, Calif. (JTA) — The snack bar is always kosher and the games are never on Friday night. The roster is packed with names like Adam, Isaac, Benjamin and Micah, with an Ori, Ethan, Yuval and Noam thrown in. The players huddle to say the Sh’ma before taking… Read more »

WASHINGTON (Forward) — Holocaust survivors denouncing the Jewish establishment would be a spectacle in almost any venue — all the more so when it’s under the bright lights of a congressional hearing. The issue at hand recently before the U.S. House of Representatives’ subcommittee on commercial and administrative law… Read more »

PARIS (JTA) — Nearly 70 years to the day since the passage of a pivotal anti-Semitic law in Vichy-occupied France, new evidence about who drafted the law is transforming some historians’ views of France’s wartime head of state, Philippe Petain. Until now the Oct. 3, 1940 law — dubbed… Read more »

Meeting with an Orthodox group in Brooklyn, New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, seated, saw an audience receptive to his message that children shouldn't be "brainwashed" into thinking being gay is OK, Oct. 10, 2010. (Creative Commons/azipaybarah

NEW YORK (JTA) — When the Republican candidate for New York governor, Carl Paladino, addressed an Orthodox crowd on Sunday about his opposition to gay pride parades and how children shouldn’t be “brainwashed” into thinking being gay is OK, he clearly thought he’d find a receptive audience. He was… Read more »