News

NEW YORK (JTA) — If it wasn’t clear before, it should be abundantly clear now: The Orthodox establishment will not sanction so-called partnership minyans, and it’s willing to go to the mat to fight them. In recent weeks, a flurry of articles by leading Orthodox rabbis and scholars have… Read more »

Whatsapp CEO Jan Koum spoke at the Mobile World Congress on Feb. 24, 2014 in Barcelona, Spain. (David Ramos/Getty Images)

Jan Koum’s birthday was Feb. 24, but he received his big gift early. The Ukraine-born CEO and founder of WhatsApp has catapulted from relative unknown to a poster boy for rags-to-riches immigrant triumph since his rapidly growing messaging company was sold last month to Facebook for a record-breaking… Read more »

A man shoots a slingshot at national guard troops following one of the largest anti-government demonstrations yet on March 2, 2014 in Caracus, Venezuela. (John Moore/Getty Images)

(JTA) — They left after Venezuelan secret police raided a Jewish club in 2007, and after the local synagogue was ransacked by unidentified thugs two years later. They left after President Hugo Chavez expelled Israel’s ambassador to Caracas, and when he called on Venezuela’s Jews to condemn Israel… Read more »

Vladimir Putin with Israeli President Shimon Peres during Peres' official visit to Moscow in 2012. (Mark Neyman/GPO/FLASH90)

(JTA) — When even Russian policemen had to pass security checks to enter the Sochi Winter Olympics, Rabbi Berel Lazar was waved in without ever showing his ID. Lazar, a Chabad-affiliated chief rabbi of Russia, was invited to the opening ceremony of the games last month by President Vladimir… Read more »

The first fuel is loaded at Iran's Bushehr nuclear power pant on Aug. 21, 2010. (Iran International Photo Agency via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The world powers holding a new round of nuclear talks with Iran starting next week are divided by another issue of geopolitical importance: the crisis in Ukraine. Tensions between Russia and the West are mounting over the Russian military takeover of the Crimean Peninsula, with the… Read more »

A wounded individual os transported to a waiting plane, where he will be flown to Israel to receive medical care. (Shimon Briman)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — For 17-year-old Bolodimir Bedyuk, a Ukrainian who was severely wounded in clashes with Ukrainian police on Feb. 18, Israeli medical care may be his only hope. After a pitched battle with Ukrainian police forces on Institutskaya Street in Kiev, Bedyuk suffered chest wounds and extensive… Read more »

A woman lays tefillin at the entrance to Tel Aviv's Carmel Market. Women of the Wall offered women in Tel Aviv the chance to put on a tallit or tefillin on Friday. (Ben Sales/JTA)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — They were standing in a public square in a major Israeli city, laying tefillin on women amid shouts of protest and quizzical looks from nearby men in black hats. It has become an occasional morning routine for Women of the Wall. Except this time, they… Read more »

MADRID, Spain (JTA) — News that Spain is proposing to offer citizenship to the descendants of Jews expelled in the 15th and 16th centuries spread like wildfire in Israel. Within hours of the Spanish government’s announcement last month, the Israeli website Ynet published a list of family names supposedly… Read more »

Barbara Garson

The Tucson Festival of Books, now the fourth largest book festival in the United States, returns to the University of Arizona campus March 15 and 16. One of the many Jewish writers presenting this year will be Barbara Garson, whose latest book is “Down the Up Escalator: How the… Read more »

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's Policy Conference March 4, 2014 in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington determined to hold the line on Iran, but he also brought something new: an expansive vision of Middle East peace. The Israeli prime minister remained firm, after meeting with President Obama on Monday, in insisting that any nuclear deal must remove… Read more »

Simferopol Reform Synagogue Ner Tamid on Feb. 28, 2014. (Courtesy Simferopol Reform Synagogue Ner Tamid)

Shortly after Russian soldiers occupied the Crimean city of Sevastopol last week, Leah Cyrlikova took her two children out for an afternoon stroll in a city park. When they passed a group of soldiers, they stopped to have a friendly chat and pose with them for photos. While many… Read more »

U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), at left, and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) deliver remarks during the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's Policy Conference in Washington. (Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — You’ve got your rousing church choir, your multi-denominational trio of rabbis quoting Torah, your montages of Israelis and Palestinians coming together and, above all, your pleas to please, please, please be nice to one another. Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative, Jew, Christian, black, white, Hispanic —… Read more »

Hundreds of thousands of haredi Orthodox Jews protesting a measure to draft them into the Israeli military, March 2, 2014. (Yaakov Naumi/FLASH90)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Beneath banners invoking historic calamities from the Egyptian enslavement to the Holocaust, hundreds of thousand of haredi Orthodox men gathered on the streets of Jerusalem to recite psalms and penitential prayers as they inveighed against an enemy they consider on par with Hitler and the… Read more »

The deli counter at Winn-Dixie's Boca Raton store is larger than that of many kosher-only supermarkets. (Uriel Heilman)

BOCA RATON, Fla. (JTA) – Stroll past the kosher section of most large supermarkets in America and you could be forgiven for thinking that Jewish diets consist mainly of jarred gefilte fish, unsalted matzahs and Tam-Tam crackers. Not so at the Winn-Dixie supermarket in this affluent South Florida suburb.… Read more »

Delta, the nom de guerre of the Jewish commander of a Ukrainian street-fighting unit, is pictured in Kiev in February. (Courtesy of 'Delta')

(JTA) — He calls his troops “the Blue Helmets of Maidan,” but brown is the color of the headgear worn by Delta — the nom de guerre of the commander of a Jewish-led militia force that participated in the Ukrainian revolution. Under his helmet, he also wears a kippah.… Read more »

Ken Sandock on the F-series diesel Copper Spike. The Arizona & Eastern Railway ran excursions from Globe, Ariz., to a local casino from 2008-2011.

Ken Sandock’s fascination with trains started when he was a boy — and it’s only gotten stronger over the years. His family lived in South Bend, Ind., and he would take the Chicago South Shore and Southbend Railroad to visit relatives in Chicago. “When I lived in Chicago there… Read more »

(L-R) Susan Wortman, Lupe Zembrano, Marjorie Cunningham and Paula Riback at Hebrew High

Teaching cooking at Tucson’s Hebrew High gives Marjorie Cunningham hope for the future. “I have confidence in our young people,” says Cunningham, who has found, over the past 15 or so years that she’s volunteered to teach the class, that her students are “pleasant, polite, appreciative and enthusiastic.” She… Read more »

Patty Vallance

Patty Vallance started volunteering when she had young children and lived in the small town of Placerville, Calif., from 1986 to 2000. “I have an obligation to my children, my family, to my community,” she told the AJP. “I wanted to raise my kids Jewish and connect them to… Read more »

From top: Lily, Bella, Michael, Allison (with Woody) and Sage Wexler (with Jessie)

Allison Wexler is not your average Jewish matchmaker. Not only is half of every pair she connects non-human, but they generally come from a pet shelter. “I can’t go anywhere in town without being called the Dog Matchmaker,” says Wexler, laughing. “For the last five or six years, people… Read more »

It was the summer of 1963 and I was 10 going on 11. I had never attended camp before. My Auntie E worked for the Jewish Federation in New York and had discussed with my parents sending me to the Hebrew Education Society’s two-week camp with her daughter (and… Read more »