Solomon I. “Sol” Littman, 96, a journalist, scholar, author and hunter of Nazi war criminals, died Jan. 2, 2017. Littman was born in Toronto and educated at the University of Toronto, State College of Washington and University of Wisconsin. After 14 years as a director of the Anti-Defamation League… Read more »
A commercial for Sensibo, a “smart” air conditioner. (Screenshot from YouTube)
(JTA) — As any pro-Israel activist will tell you, innovators from the Jewish state have invented products and technologies you use all the time, from instant-messaging technology to Waze, the crowdsourced traffic app. Israel’s tech scene is famously thriving, with about 5,000 startups across the country. Nearly 1,500 of those are in Tel Aviv… Read more »
(Screenshot from YouTube)
(JTA) — As the folks on the next season of “Game of Thrones” might say, “Winter is here.” That means it’s time to get under the covers and engage in the national pastime of binge-watching TV shows. Since Netflix pioneered the streaming model in the late 2000s, other… Read more »
SONY DSC
(The Nosher via JTA) — My 4-year-old, previously meatball-loving child has recently decided, in fact, she does not like meatballs any longer. Or tomato sauce. My husband does not like spaghetti squash. And I am trying to cut back on my carbs just a smidge. In short, dinner is… Read more »
Jerusalem resident Alexandra Benjamin and her son at his bris in 2016. (Yitz Woolf)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — When Alexandra Benjamin was pregnant recently with her son, she went shopping for appliances for her new apartment in Jerusalem. At the store, the religious salesman asked about her husband. Benjamin explained that she was having the baby on her own. “That’s so great!” she… Read more »
A new exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum allows visitors to video chat with refugees. (Courtesy of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – He’d rather talk to young women than answer my insistent line of questioning. He speaks in terms that make me feel like a Luddite, and when I bring up stuff he’d rather not talk about, out comes the smartphone. Omar, a Syrian refugee passing time… Read more »
Saul Kaye has released four albums of Jewish blues. (Courtesy of Kaye)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Saul Kaye never wanted to be a “Jewish blues” player. In his opinion, the Jewish music he had heard growing up in Northern California’s Bay Area ranged from “really bad to horrible.” In 2009, he was touring as a rock musician, playing hundreds of… Read more »
(The Nosher via JTA) — Brrrr, it’s cold outside. But we know exactly what you need to warm up: some spicy, hawaij hot cocoa. Hawaij is an important, if not nearly sacred, Yemenite spice blend. It’s one of the most important ingredients in Yemenite cooking, with both savory blends using coriander, turmeric… Read more »
President Barack Obama delivers a speech at the Jerusalem Convention Center, March 21, 2013. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
(JTA) — During his campaign for president in 2008, I wrote a column suggesting that Barack Obama was struggling to connect with Jews because they weren’t sure that he supported Israel’s cause in his gut — that is, in his kishkes. I may have been the first… Read more »
Sixth and I, a nondenominational synagogue, has planned a Shabbat of programming around the Women's March on Washington, including meals, lectures, meditation and yoga. (Courtesy of Sixth and I)
(JTA) — On Friday, the United States will inaugurate a new president and usher in an era of new policies and rhetoric. But at the Sixth and I synagogue in Washington, D.C., eyes are on the day after, when some 200,000 marchers will gather to reassert support for… Read more »
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, speaks with European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini during the Middle East peace conference in Paris, Jan. 15, 2017. (Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Two days after delegates from more than 70 nations attended the Paris summit on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is clear that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was wrong to label the meeting “useless.” Admittedly the France-initiated event, which neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority attended, did… Read more »
Rabbi Marvin Hier speaking at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's 2015 National Tribute Dinner in Beverly Hills, Calif., March 24, 2015. (Imeh Akpanudosen/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Rabbi Marvin Hier has known Charles and Seryl Kushner — Jared Kushner’s parents and Donald Trump’s in-laws — for decades. The Hiers and the Kushners have gone to the same kosher for Passover resort, the Arizona Biltmore, over the years. The Kushner family, prominent real estate… Read more »
Pawel Sawicki guiding journalists through the so-called central sauna of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dec. 1, 2016. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
OSWIECIM, Poland (JTA) — Long before he moved here to become the spokesman for the Auschwitz museum and lead its social media effort, Pawel Sawicki’s life was intricately connected to this sleepy town near Krakow. A Warsaw-area radio journalist, Sawicki used to visit Oswiecim as a boy on… Read more »
Lawrence Grossman (Courtesy of American Jewish Committee)
(JTA) — Foreign ministers of some 70 nations are expected to meet in Paris on Jan. 15, five days before the American presidential inauguration, for an international conference that is being advertised as dealing with the Middle East. No, this high-level gathering will not address the major crises bedeviling the… Read more »
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely
(GPO)
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely, current and former foreign ministry officials said Thursday that Sunday’s “peace” conference in Paris would do little but demonize Israel and push off the possibility of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Netanyahu called the conference “rigged by the Palestinians under… Read more »
Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau, right, meets with B'Noam director Rabbi Yisroel Meir Riani in Modiin, Israel, October 2016.
JERUSALEM (JTA) – Many Israelis feel alienated by the marriage process in their country, fed up with the bureaucracy and strict religious requirements. Some seek to reform the haredi Orthodox-dominated Chief Rabbinate while creating alternatives to its monopoly on marriage and other personal status issues in Israel. But haredi Rabbi Yisroel Meir… Read more »
President Barack Obama delivering his farewell speech in Chicago, Jan. 10, 2017. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – Barack Obama got his kishkes back. The president, whose alleged aloofness was the signature flaw cited by his rivals, his critics and at times his friends, ended his presidency with an impassioned appeal for the preservation of democracy — his lower lip trembling, a tear streaking his… Read more »
A view of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin with the image of an Israeli flag, Jan. 9, 2017. (Odd Anderson/AFP/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Is terrorism softening European attitudes toward Israel? When a Palestinian terrorist used a car to ram and kill an Israeli soldier in eastern Jerusalem in 2014, the European Union urged “restraint” and, without condemning the attack, called it merely “further painful evidence of the need to undertake… Read more »
David Posner (Courtesy of JCC Association)
(JTA) — A bomb threat is never an inconsequential thing. But 16 in one day is inconceivable – at least it was until Monday. That’s when 16 Jewish community centers in nine states received calls threatening a bomb on site. While the bombs turned out to be hoaxes, the calls themselves were not. They were… Read more »
Protestors rally in support of the Affordable Care Act in Philadelphia, Dec. 20, 2016. (Lisa Lake/Getty Images for Moveon.org)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Before the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, Jewish Family Service of Metro Detroit organized local doctors to provide free care to Jews who lacked health insurance. The Detroit agency closed the doctors’ program after enactment of the health care law, also known… Read more »
