HydroChic sells a variety of swimdresses, tops and bottoms. (Courtesy of HydroChic)
(JTA) — Sara Wolf was running around a water park in an oversized T-shirt when she became acutely aware of the need for a “less frumpy” yet covered-up swimwear option. So she and Daniella Teutsch, a former fashion industry colleague, launched HydroChic, a swimwear company for women who want… Read more »
The United Nations hosted an anti-BDS summit at its New York City headquarters, May 31, 2016. (Shahar Azran)
UNITED NATIONS (JTA) – It was an incongruous sight: The U.N. General Assembly hall filled to capacity with 1,500 cheering people waving miniature Israeli flags and singing “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem. No, hell hadn’t frozen over. The occasion was a one-day conference hosted by Israel’s U.N. mission devoted to… Read more »
Young Israelis living on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv in protest of high housing prices, Aug. 10, 2011. (Liron Almog/Flash90)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — On one hand, most Israelis say their financial situation is good and getting better. On the other hand, they’re worried they won’t be able to provide for their children. On one hand, they want significantly more government spending in a wide range of public services.… Read more »
Director Yvan Attal, right, with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Dany Boon during the filming of "The Jews" in Paris. (Courtesy of Wild Bunch Productions)
PARIS (JTA) — When the French-Jewish film director Yvan Attal titled his much-hyped comedy about anti-Semitism “They Are Everywhere,” he did so in reference to how some anti-Semites feel about Jews and vice versa. But the French-language title applies in another way, too: Though the film has yet to… Read more »
On a tour of the Temple Mount, Yehuda Glick shows religious Jews a diagram of the Jewish temple that once stood where the golden Dome of the Rock stands today in Jerusalem, Sept. 17, 2013. (Christa Case Bryant/The Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — A year and a half ago he was a fringe Temple Mount activist expected to die, the victim of a point-blank assassination attempt. This week he will enter the Knesset, the ruling Likud party’s replacement legislator for outgoing Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon. Yehuda Glick’s journey —… Read more »
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, left, embracing philosopher and social activist Cornel West in Des Moines, Iowa, Nov. 14, 2015. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Democratic Party platform drafting committee is top heavy with veterans of political battles over Israel — some friendly, some critical, and including at least one major backer of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The Democratic National Committee named the committee on Monday, a day… Read more »
Members of the Tzav Pius 13-year-olds' team in the Israeli city of Pardes Hanna participating before practice in an educational exercise meant to teach teamwork.
PARDES HANNA, Israel (JTA) — When Yoel decided, at age 8, to begin observing Shabbat, there was one problem: It meant he couldn’t join most of Israel’s youth soccer teams, which played games on Saturday. Yoel, now 12, has always lived in the increasingly large gray area between Israel’s… Read more »
The Detroit skyline (Wikimedia Commons)
(JTA) — For the second year in a row, the Detroit area’s Walk for Israel has rebuffed the sponsorship of left-wing pro-Israel groups because of their support for boycotting settlements. At the heart of the dispute is a question of definitions: Is support of a boycott targeting Jewish enterprises beyond… Read more »
Jonathan Sarna at Brandeis University, his undergraduate alma mater and where he has taught for more than 25 years, May 10, 2016. (Uriel Heilman)
WALTHAM, Mass. (JTA) – When Jonathan Sarna was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 1999 at the age of 44, it changed his life. Already a highly regarded historian at Brandeis University, Sarna was in the midst of writing his seminal study of American Jewish history when he realized with… Read more »
Students at an elementary school in Portland, Maine, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, March 25, 2015. (Gabe Souza/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images)
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — As a U.S. immigrant and a parent, I’m somewhat fanatical about my kids’ appreciation for their citizenship. Last year I organized what I hope will be an annual second-grade field trip to our local swearing-in ceremony for new American citizens. As a result of that experience,… Read more »
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, shaking hands with Deputy IDF Chief of Staff Yair Golan, and standing with President Reuven Rivlin, at an Israeli Independence Day ceremony honoring soldiers, May 12, 2016. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — For a leader often accused of not wanting to talk peace with the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sure does a lot of talking about wanting to talk to the Palestinians. In a series of three statements this month, Netanyahu repeatedly stressed the need… Read more »
Hillel Kuttler, right, and Avraham Rechtshafer meeting at a Jerusalem pizza shop for the first time since the mid-1980s. (Hillel Kuttler)
The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. JERUSALEM (JTA) – On a pleasant evening in this capital city, through the near darkness, I caught his wave from a half-block away. Soon we were standing together, smiling and clasping hands, two men who hadn’t seen… Read more »
Amir Haddad, a French-Israeli dentist, will represent France at this year’s Eurovision contest. (Courtesy of Eurovision)
(JTA) — The Eurovision Song Contest — the world’s most popular televised singing competition, which pits singers from 43 countries against one another in the battle for the year’s best pop song — is being held this week. France’s representative is a 31-year-old Israeli singer, Amir Haddad, who goes by the… Read more »
A menorah is lit in London's Trafalgar Square to mark the beginning of Hanukkah, Dec. 20, 2011. (Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images)
LONDON (JTA) — Less than two years after he moved his family from Paris to London, David Herz is already feeling at home in the United Kingdom. The co-founder of a communications agency, Herz is among thousands of French Jews who moved across the channel in recent years. He says… Read more »
Kathryn Hahn arriving at the FYC special screening of “Transparent” at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles, May 5, 2016. (Michael Tran/FilmMagic)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Kathryn Hahn’s no rabbi, but this nice Catholic girl from Cleveland plays one on TV. As Rabbi Raquel Fein on “Transparent,” the groundbreaking Amazon series about a dysfunctional Jewish family with a transgender parent (Jeffrey Tambor), Hahn has spent a lot of time thinking about… Read more »
Yitzhak Rabin, right, and his wife, Leah, in 1968 (Israel Government Press Office)
(JTA) — “Rabin in his Own Words,” which opens in Friday in New York, Los Angeles and South Florida, is more than a tribute to the two-time Israeli prime minister tragically gunned down in 1995. The aptly named cinematic autobiography, which uses archival footage going back to the statesman’s childhood, is entirely narrated… Read more »
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (JTA) — Recently, in an article for JTA, “The Missing Left: Where’s the support for liberal Zionists on campus?,” Andrew Silow-Carroll noted that “many American pro-Israel organizations and leaders ignore or ostracize liberal Zionists.” In the absence of progressive Zionist groups on campus, who should be… Read more »
After a documentary photographer stumbled upon Anushka Warshawski's photo album, it took some sleuthing to figure out who she was. (Courtesy of Richard Schofield)
NEW YORK (JTA) – When documentary photographer Richard Schofield stumbled upon a trove of unidentified prewar photographs in September 2013 in the storage room of the Sugihara House museum in Kaunas, Lithuania, he knew he had found something special. The photos, dating from about 1910 through 1940, were from a… Read more »
Auschwitz and Belsen concentration camp survivor Eva Behar showing her number tattoo in her London home, Dec. 1, 2014. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
(JTA) — They survived unimaginable horrors, yet went on to live productive lives, despite the haunting memories, the profound loss and physical scars from years of deprivation. Now many Holocaust survivors need our assistance so they may live their twilight years with dignity in their homes and communities. Most… Read more »
Ezra Furman wraps tefillin and reads Jewish philosophers while on tour. (Phil Sharp)
(JTA) — Ezra Furman is an acclaimed indie rocker who, while hanging on his tour bus, has been known to lay tefillin. Striking, too, is Furman’s typical getup: The singer and guitarist often eschews the standard millennial indie rocker uniform — skinny jeans, tight T-shirt — in favor of… Read more »
