Posts By PHYLLIS BRAUN - AJP Executive Editor

(JTA) — The president of Malawi said that his country would open an embassy in Jerusalem Lazarus Chakwera made the announcement Saturday as part of a larger expansion of the country’s diplomatic representation abroad. Malawi currently does not have a diplomatic mission in Israel. The announcement came a day… Read more »

(JTA) — The display was striking: 1,019 empty plastic chairs set up in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, one for each of the Israeli victims of the coronavirus since the pandemic began this spring. The chairs, set up on Monday by the grassroots organization Standing Together, each bore a… Read more »

(JTA) — A Vienna-born Israeli man who left Austria 76 years ago at the age of 8 became the first Jew to receive Austrian citizenship under a new law that allows those who were persecuted by the Nazi regime and their direct descendants to obtain Austrian citizenship without giving… Read more »

(JTA) — Dean Kremer, the first Israeli baseball player to be drafted into the Major Leagues, was called up to the Baltimore Orioles and earned a victory in his debut — all in less than 24 hours. Kremer led the Orioles to a 5-1 win over the New York… Read more »

(JTA) – Rising fears about a second wave of coronavirus cases in New York City’s Orthodox communities appear to be coming to pass, with the proportion of tests turning up cases of the disease more than four times the citywide rate in one heavily Orthodox neighborhood in newly released… Read more »

(JTA) — Before deciding to stay permanently, Chaim Chazin would visit the small city of Uman, Ukraine, every year around Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year. For Chazin, a religiously observant music producer from Israel, the brief annual visits were energizing spiritual experiences away from money troubles back home.… Read more »

(JTA) — Israel passed a grim milestone over the weekend as its tally of coronavirus deaths exceeded 1,000. The country currently has the highest rate of new infections per capita in the world, with an average of 199.3 new cases a day per 1 million residents for the week… Read more »

(JTA) — Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms face increasing pressure to crack down against anti-Semitism and other forms of hate speech. This summer, the Anti-Defamation League and NAACP led a one-month corporate boycott against advertising on Facebook, and a group of British Jews led a 24-hour boycott… Read more »

(JTA) — Yeshiva University rejected the formation of a campus group for queer students but said it was putting in place new policies to help LGBTQ students feel safe. The flagship Modern Orthodox college in New York sent a statement to students Thursday addressing a yearlong battle over whether… Read more »

Jone Koran Hughes, 89, formerly of Tucson, died July 7, 2020. She was born in New York City to John J. Koran and Matilda Lutcha Koran. Jone survived polio as a child and carried a disability her whole life. The first in her family to earn a degree, from… Read more »

Jewish Family & Children’s Services of Southern Arizona, in collaboration with the University of Arizona Hillel Foundation, the Tucson Jewish Community Center, and Arizona Youth Partnership, will present “Increased Risk in Troubling Times: Suicide Prevention for Today,” on Thursday, Sept. 10, which is World Suicide Prevention Day. The online… Read more »

(JTA) — Hundreds of synagogues have been shuttered for months. Jewish organizations are slashing budgets and staff. Jewish community centers, saddled with empty gyms and child care centers, have laid off masses of employees. Jewish camps closed this summer, Jewish day schools will hold only virtual sessions in the… Read more »

Ancestry, the global leader in family history and consumer genomics, has completed a significant philanthropic initiative to digitize and make searchable millions of Holocaust and Nazi persecution-related records. Building on its commitment to preserve at-risk history, there are now more than 19 million Holocaust records available globally, for free… Read more »

(JTA) — In early June, as anti-racism protests swept the country in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Beth Hillel Temple in Kenosha, Wisconsin, signed onto an interfaith letter supporting peaceful protest and condemning “a broken societal system which disproportionately affects communities of color.” This week,… Read more »

(JTA) — Residents of Uman, Ukraine, scuffled with Orthodox Jews who were seeking to enter a building in the city that is the site of an annual  Jewish pilgrimage. In a video posted to Facebook on Friday by Sergiy Alekseev, a city council member representing the far-right Svoboda party, several… Read more »

(JTA) — El Al, Israel’s national airline, is scheduled to make its first publicly advertised flight to the United Arab Emirates. The flight, which appears to be reserved for dignitaries, is set to leave Ben Gurion Airport on Monday bound for Abu Dhabi, the Associated Press reported. The flight… Read more »

(JTA) — Only one person has ever officially fulfilled the traditional Jewish birthday blessing of living “until 120,” but Rosalie Wolpe from South Africa is well on her way. Wolpe celebrated her 111th birthday last week at her Cape Town retirement facility, Highlands House Home for Jewish Aged, with… Read more »

(JTA) — Four years ago, the Movement for Black Lives put out a platform that, among a long list of detailed policy recommendations, accused Israel of genocide. Several major Jewish organizations expressed their outrage and put out statements condemning the platform. On Friday, the Movement for Black Lives convened… Read more »

(J. the Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Goyim TV, an anti-Semitic video-sharing website that was promoted with a “banner drop” from a Los Angeles freeway overpass on Saturday, has been taken down by its domain host under a flood of complaints. Jon Minadeo Jr., 37, was behind both… Read more »

(JTA) — The Vatican both fought efforts efforts to reunite two Holocaust orphans with their relatives and urged Pope Pius XII not to protest the Nazi deportation of Italian Jews, Brown University historian David I. Kertzer has found. Kertzer published the results of his investigation into Vatican documents unsealed… Read more »