News

Ilhan Omar endorses the Israel boycott and is on the influential Foreign Affairs Committee. Here’s what she and her colleagues say.

Rep. Ilhan Omar listens during a news conference on prescription drugs at the Capitol, Jan. 10, 2019. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
January 24, 2019 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The top two Jewish members of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee revile BDS, the boycott Israel movement. Its newest member, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has embraced the movement. It’s not a big deal, the Jewish Democrats say. Reps. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the committee… Read more »

Insisting it is not anti-Semitic, NJ group sees haredi Orthodox as a threat to ‘quality of life’

An Orthodox woman pushes a stroller in Lakewood, N.J., in 2013. The population in the largely haredi Orthodox town has boomed in the past couple of decades, and haredi families are looking to move to neighboring towns. (Dennis Fraevich/Flickr)
January 24, 2019 / Ben Sales, JTA

(JTA) — The video, with suspenseful music playing in the background, opens with footage of a crowd of Orthodox Jews. Then it paraphrases a classic poem about the Holocaust. “First they came for my house, but I did not speak up,” the narrator says. “I said I am not… Read more »

How a Jewish brother and sister are making political history

Rabbi Yehiel Kalish attending the swearing-in of Dafna Michaelson Jenet, his sister, at the Colorado House of Representatives in Denver, Jan. 11, 2017. (Courtesy of Michaelson Jenet)
January 24, 2019 / Josefin Dolsten, JTA

(JTA) — Only days after being sworn into the Illinois House of Representatives on Sunday, Rabbi Yehiel Kalish paid a visit to Israel. The father of six said he needed guidance from rabbis in the Jewish state to serve in his new role. “The immediate reaction of the Chicago political… Read more »

German Jewish leader gets threats after criticizing far-right party
January 24, 2019 / Toby Axelrod, JTA

(JTA) — A German Jewish leader has been receiving verbal threats since she criticized Germany’s strongest right-populist party in a Holocaust Remembrance Day address. “Since then, almost every minute, I have received wild insults, threats and insults by email and telephone,” Charlotte Knobloch, 86, head of the Jewish community… Read more »

People in the news 1.25.19
January 24, 2019 /

Tedd Goldfinger, D.O., founder of Desert Cardiology of Tucson, has received the title of Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology. He is one of only two Tucson-area physicians to receive this distinction. In addition to his practice at Desert Cardiology of Tucson and Northwest Medical Center for more… Read more »

Free loans available to furloughed federal workers in Tucson, other cities
January 24, 2019 / Phyllis Braun, AJP Executive Editor

Jewish federal employees who are struggling with expenses due to the government shutdown can now find some relief. The Hebrew Free Loan Association of Greater Washington approved an emergency program in early January to provide loans of up to $2,000 per household to affected Jews living in the Washington,… Read more »

40 years later, the ‘Holocaust’ miniseries returns to Germany

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 07: Actress Tovah Feldshuh attends the "Queen Of The Mean: The Rise And Fall Of Leona Helmsley" Play Reading at the Actors Temple Theatre on April 7, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Steven A Henry/Getty Images)
January 23, 2019 / Toby Axelrod

BERLIN (JTA) — For Sigmount Koenigsberg, the most searing scene in the U.S.-made “Holocaust” miniseries broadcast here 40 years ago was when a German child throws photos of a Jewish family into a fireplace. The pictures curl up and melt in the flames. The moment “somehow burned into me,” recalls… Read more »

Poland’s main Jewish umbrella group elects its first woman leader
January 23, 2019 / Katarzyna Markusz

WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — The main Jewish umbrella group in Poland has elected its first woman leader. Monika Krawczyk was chosen as the board chairman of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, which deals with restitution matters, among other issues. “I think it is a great honor… Read more »

U.S. cuts to Palestinians begin to have impact
January 22, 2019 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Reports of rollbacks in Palestinian aid projects are emerging as massive cuts in U.S. aid to the Palestinians kick in. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that up to 90,000 Palestinians will not get food aid in programs that are administered by nongovernmental organizations funded by U.S.… Read more »

5 Jewish things to know about Kirsten Gillibrand

Surrounded by her family, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand announces that she will run for president in 2020 outside the Country View Diner in Troy, N.Y., Jan. 16, 2019. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
January 22, 2019 /

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Kirsten Gillibrand who just joined a soon-to-be crowded field for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 would seem familiar as well as alien to the Kirsten Gillibrand who won an upset campaign for Congress in 2006. Like Kirsten Gillibrand 1.0, the latest model was earthy… Read more »

A YIVO conference finds a new audience for Yiddish anarchism

Some 450 people attended a conference at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York on the history of Yiddish Anarchism, Jan. 20, 2019. (JTA Photo)
January 22, 2019 / Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — To the degree that you know anything about Yiddish anarchism, it probably boils down to one name: Emma Goldman. And even then you are probably more familiar with Goldman as an immigrant firebrand and ur-“nasty woman” than for the truly radical content of her political… Read more »

Rabbi appointed to serve in Illinois legislature
January 22, 2019 / Marcy Oster, JTA

(JTA) — A rabbi was appointed to serve in the Illinois legislature, a first for the state. Rabbi Yehiel Kalish, 43 and a father of six, was sworn in to the state’s House of Representatives on Sunday night. The Orthodox spiritual leader will be representing a district that is… Read more »

Terrorist attacks in Israel decrease sharply despite 3 deaths
January 18, 2019 / Cnaan Liphshiz

(JTA) — The number of terrorist attacks against Israelis dropped by 75 percent last month over November, but it was also the deadliest month since March with three people killed. The downturn in attacks was mostly due to Hamas inactivity along the border with Gaza, the Israel Security Agency… Read more »

Jews of color on what Martin Luther King Jr. Day means to them in 2019

UNSPECIFIED - MARCH 13: "Leaders of the protest, holding flags, from left Bishop James Shannon, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, Dr. Martin Luther King and Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath." Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Arlington Cemetery, February 6, 1968. Published February 7, 1968. (Photo by Charles Del Vecchio/Washington Post/Getty Images)
January 18, 2019 / Josefin Dolsten amd Ben Sales, JTA

(JTA) — For many Jewish organizations, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a time to talk about the current state of black-Jewish relations. There’s a lot to talk about this year, from the controversy over ties between Women’s March organizer Tamika Mallory and Louis Farrakhan, to common cause over… Read more »

‘The Invisibles’ tells the story of Jews who somehow survived in Nazi Berlin

Aaron Altaras plays Eugen Friede in "The Invisibles." (Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment)
January 18, 2019 / Curt Schleier

(JTA) — In May 1943, after years of killings and deportations, the Nazis declared Berlin “judenfrei,” or free of Jews. What they didn’t know was that approximately 7,000 Jews remained in hiding in the city, and not only in attics and basements — often in plain sight. “The Invisibles,”… Read more »