The Laemmle theater chain offers a new Christmas option for Jews. (Courtesy of Laemmle.com)
LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Sick of eating Chinese food and taking in another modern blockbuster on Christmas, while your Christian friends party together with sweets and eggnog? Thanks to the imagination of Greg Laemmle, co-owner of a chain of eight art house cinemas bearing his family name in greater… Read more »
Alice Walker at the "The Color Purple" Broadway opening night at The Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in New York City, Dec. 10, 2015. (Mark Sagliocco/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Alice Walker has come under intense criticism after endorsing a book by anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist David Icke. In an interview with The New York Times Book Review, Walker — who is best known for her book “The Color Purple,” detailing the hardships of African-American women in… Read more »
Andrew Rehfeld will serve as HUC’s 13th president. (Courtesy of HUC) NEW YORK (JTA) —The Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion has appointed Andrew Rehfeld, a political science professor who has led the Jewish Federation of St. Louis since 2012, to serve as its 13th president. On Tuesday, the Reform movement’s flagship seminary said Rehfeld would lead its four campuses in… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — A Pink Floyd cover band announced on Tuesday that its upcoming Israel tour is back on after cancelling due to pressure from BDS advocate Roger Waters, co-founder of the original Pink Floyd. On Sunday UK Pink Floyd Experience cancelled its shows in Tel Aviv, Haifa and… Read more »
(JTA) — The internal political fallout over the murder of dissident Jamal Khashoggi may damage Saudi Arabia’s budding unofficial ties with Israel, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. The newspaper cited the dismissal of two senior advisers to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who were intimately involved in forging ties between… Read more »
A stunning new facsimile of the 14th-century Sarajevo Hagaddah was on display, and for sale, by the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina,in the exhibit hall at the Association of Jewish Studies convention. ( Penny Schwartz)
BOSTON (JTA) — Diversity and inclusion were among the hot topics at the 50th annual convention of the Association of Jewish Studies, where some 1,200 Jewish studies scholars gathered for a three-day conference that began here Sunday. Fifty years to the month after a handful of scholars in the… Read more »
Noah Klieger discussed his life in a 2018 video for 70 Faces Media, JTA's parent company. (70 Faces Media)
(JTA) — Noah Klieger, who survived Auschwitz by pretending to be a boxer and went on to a storied career in journalism, died Thursday in Israel. He was 92. As a prisoner in Auschwitz, Klieger was selected for the gas chamber but managed to talk himself out of the… Read more »
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. (Courtesy Professional Staff Congress)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The American Federation of Teachers said vandals defaced its headquarters in Washington D.C. with anti-Semitic graffiti. A number of areas around the building, including a wall, were yellow spray-painted on Tuesday and Wednesday with “I want Jexit!” an apparent anti-Semitic play on “Brexit,” Britain’s planned pullout… Read more »
(JTA) — Jared Kushner is being considered for White House chief of staff, according to a CBS News report. Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, would replace John Kelly, who is set to leave the post at the beginning of next year. A real estate developer who had… Read more »
(JTA) — The latest honor for Jewish actor Kirk Douglas came in the upstate New York town where he was raised on his 102nd birthday. Friend and relatives gathered in Amsterdam on Sunday to unveil a historic marker for a sign that will say that Douglas, 102, “Rose From Poverty To… Read more »
Dave Nicholls, seated, rides in the bobsled. (Courtesy of Nicholls)
NEW YORK (JTA) — In the span of just a couple days, Chaim Raice went from never having been on a bobsled to being a contender to represent Israel in the 2022 Winter Olympics. And it all started with a Facebook post. Raice, a house builder based in Pomona,… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — A baby born prematurely after his mother was shot during a drive-by terror attack in the West Bank died on Wednesday. The statement from Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Hospital announcing the boy’s passing said the parents met their son earlier Wednesday morning. The baby had been delivered… Read more »
(JTA) — An anti-Semitic video was posted on social media and anti-Semitic fliers posted both, related to the Wisconsin high school students who made what appears to be a Nazi salute in a junior prom photo have appeared around the Baraboo community. A seven-minute video was posted on Sunday to the… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Two Israelis were killed and two seriously injured in a second shooting attack near a bus stop in the West Bank. The attack on Thursday morning occurred at a bus stop outside of the Givat Asaf settlement, about a mile down the same road from the… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — No Jewish settlers will be forced to leave and they will build more homes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Tuesday in the wake of a drive-by shooting in the West Bank that left seven injured. “As long as I am prime minister, not even one Jew… Read more »
Sara Lopez Sara Lopez, a local wife, mother and opera singer, is curating a Jewish women’s performance showcase, by and for women, at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on Sunday, Jan. 6 at 7 p.m. Having an all-female audience “allows women across the spectrum of Jewish practice and belief to participate,”… Read more »
<p>(<a href=”http://jta.org”>JTA</a>) — A play opening in London about rising anti-Semitism in Britain has become the target of anti-Semites.</p><p>(<a href=”http://jta.org”>JTA</a>) — A play opening in London about rising anti-Semitism in Britain has become the target of anti-Semites.</p><p>The play, “One Jewish Boy,” by Stephen Laughton, looks at the hatred and… Read more »
Danish soldiers guard the Jewish Synagogue in Copenhagen, Denmark, Sept. 29, 2017. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/AFP/Getty Images)
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — The last time that a stranger directed an anti-Semitic insult at me, I was carrying supplies for my son’s birthday party. It was on a Sunday afternoon on Dam Square. Carrying Star of David party decorations in a see-through bag, I paused to snap some pictures… Read more »
Children stick white roses into a Star of David sculpture at the construction site of a new synagogue in Potsdam, Germany, Nov. 9, 2018, the 80th anniversary of the Nazi Kristallnacht pogrom. (Bernd Settnik/AFP/Getty Images)
MUNICH (JTA) — Weeks after they emigrated from Russia and moved to Germany, the Nedlin family sought to join the local Jewish community. Registering for membership in a Jewish community — a practice common in European countries — was a significant step for the Nedlins, who before emigrating in 1992… Read more »
(JTA) — A 21-year-old Ohio man was arrested for planning an attack on a Toledo-area synagogue. Damon Joseph of Holland was charged Monday in U.S. District Court in Toledo with attempting to provide material support to ISIS. He told an undercover FBI agent that he was inspired by the… Read more »
