News

YMG poker tournament proceeds benefit Homer Davis Elementary School kids

(L-R): Ben Silverman, Steve Landau, Scott Goorman and Andrew Isaac play a hand at the JFSA Young Men’s Group Poker Tournament, April 21. (Photo Damion Alexander)
May 3, 2019 /

Mike Wexler reigned over the Young Men’s Group Poker Tournament April 21. Other top finishers, in order of rank, were Peter DeLuca, Josh Silverman, Myles Levine, and Mckenzie Carlat. Fifty players raised $1,800 at the event for “Making a Difference Every Day: The Homer Davis Project.” Proceeds will provide… Read more »

Or Chadash Sisterhood honors Saboda

(L-R) Missy Driggers, Kathylynn Saboda, Pearl Joseph, Emily Joseph, Rabbi Thomas Louchheim, and Cantor Janece Cohen at Congregation Or Chadash on April 14 (Courtesy Congregation Or Chadash)
May 3, 2019 /

The Sisterhood of Congregation Or Chadash honored Kathylynn Saboda as its first Eshet Or (Woman of Light) at a luncheon and end of year meeting on Sunday, April 14. Saboda served as Sisterhood president in 2004. She served on the congregation’s board of directors from 2005-2008; since 2008 she… Read more »

Invisible Theatre’s Project Pastime to present musical

Invisible Theatre Managing Artistic Director Susan Claassen, left (in hat) and Pastime Players students and teachers at their 2018 performance at Doolen Middle School. (Photo courtesy Invisible Theatre)
May 3, 2019 /

The Invisible Theatre’s Pastime Players, an award-winning, multi-disciplinary arts education program for mentally and physically challenged students, will present a free performance of “The Me Inside of Me” on Wednesday, May 8 at 7 p.m. at Doolen Middle School, 2400 N. Country Club Road. Pastime Players started as a… Read more »

Poway, a California haven, learns it can happen here

Hundreds gather in Poway, Calif., for a vigil for the victims of the synagogue shooting there, April 28, 2019. (Gabrielle Birkner)
May 2, 2019 / Gabrielle Birkner, JTA

POWAY, Calif. (JTA)— With hundreds gathered to show support for the victims of a shooting inside his synagogue, Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein recounted the moment when he came face to face with the gunman and what happened next: He described watching a congregant’s husband, a doctor, faint as he attempted… Read more »

No one wants to publish Woody Allen’s memoir
May 2, 2019 /

(JTA) — Woody Allen can’t get a book deal. In the latest step of his precipitous fall from grace, the prolific director has been unable to find a publisher for a memoir he’s shopping around. This comes after Netflix canceled a multi-movie deal and some of his former stars… Read more »

How Venezuela’s remaining Jews are hanging on amid the crisis

Students argue with police officers during a rally in support of opposition leader Juan Guaido and against Nicolas Maduro at Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas, Venezuela, May 2, 2019. (Edilzon Gamez/Getty Images)
May 2, 2019 / Ben Sales, JTA

(JTA) — One night years ago, when a Jewish man was driving to his parents’ house in Caracas, Venezuela, two cars blocked off the street he was on and held him up at gunpoint. He got into their car and began answering questions: who he was, where he lived,… Read more »

I used to avoid everything Holocaust related. This Auschwitz exhibit changed my attitude.

An original barrack from Monowitz, a labor and concentration camp that was part of the Auschwitz complex, is featured in the exhibit "Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away" at the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City. (Josefin Dolsten)
May 2, 2019 / Josefin Dolsten, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — As a teenager, whenever my mother would suggest watching a Holocaust film, I would groan. I always felt that the Shoah already was close enough. My father had shown me the letters my great-grandfather wrote from a concentration camp in Poland to his daughter, who… Read more »

First-ever official US delegation joins March of the Living at Auschwitz

Elan Carr, second from left, the U.S. special anti-Semitism envoy, stands with U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, second from right, and Israeli soldiers at the March of the Living at Auschwitz, May 2, 2019. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
May 2, 2019 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

OSWIECIM, Poland (JTA) — President Donald Trump’s appointee as special envoy for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism toured Auschwitz for the first time on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. Elan Carr, who was named earlier this year, was part of the first official U.S. delegation to the March of the Living,… Read more »

In the wake of another deadly synagogue shooting, we need Holocaust education more than ever

A gate with the inscription "Work Sets You Free" at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp memorial in Oranienburg, Germany, Jan. 25, 2019. (Omer Messinger/Getty Images)
May 1, 2019 / Janice Weinman and Ellen Hershkin, JTA

(JTA) — On the Shabbat morning of April 27, Hadassah member Lori Gilbert-Kaye was murdered while celebrating Passover at the Chabad of Poway. The synagogue’s rabbi, a male congregant and an 8-year-old girl were wounded as well by the self-avowed white supremacist shooter. We know that anti-Semitism is on the… Read more »

Famed Nazi hunters Beate and Serge Klarsfeld: It feels like the 1930s

Beate and Serge Klarsfeld pose before receiving an award from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., April 29, 2019. (Ron Kampeas)
May 1, 2019 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) — It’s not an unfamiliar frame for describing the rise of the new nationalism: There’s a bad wind blowing through the West, and nothing less than democracy is at stake. What makes it especially unsettling for Beate and Serge Klarsfeld is that they have lived through it… Read more »

French Jews say officials are reluctant to call out anti-Semitism by Muslims

The sundial of France's Palais de Justice in Paris reads "Hora fugit stat jus" (the hour passes, justice remains). (Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images)
May 1, 2019 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

(JTA) — For most of his adult life, Sammy Ghozlan has worked with French authorities fighting crime. Ghozlan, 75, started as a police officer, ascending through the ranks to become a police commissioner in the Paris area. And since 2002 he has headed one of French Jewry’s most prominent… Read more »

Survivor Ed Mosberg, 93, is braving cancer to march at Auschwitz, perhaps for the last time

Edward Mosberg, holding a Torah scroll, during March of the Living in 2017 at the former death camp Auschwitz in Poland. (Courtesy of From the Depths)
May 1, 2019 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

KRAKOW, Poland (JTA) — At the age of 93, Holocaust survivor Ed Mosberg is saying his goodbyes to the city of his birth. Flanked by two physicians who accompanied him all the way from New Jersey, Mosberg, who made his fortune in construction after surviving several Nazi concentration camps,… Read more »

Mitt Romney: Two-state solution is all there is

Sens. Mitt Romney, left, and Chris Murphy at the Capitol discuss their recent tour of the Middle East, April 30, 2019. (Ron Kampeas)
May 1, 2019 / Ron Kampeas, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Sen. Mitt Romney returned from a Middle East tour saying that he saw no alternative to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict other than the two-state solution. The Utah Republican, his party’s 2012 presidential nominee, has just assumed the chairmanship of the Middle East subcommittee in the Senate. Romney’s conclusion… Read more »

Edith Muhlrad
May 1, 2019 /

Edith N. Muhlrad, 95, died April 12, 2019. Mrs. Muhlrad was born in Newark, New Jersey, on August 12, 1923. She was preceded in death by her husband of 65 years, Norbert F. Muhlrad; and sisters, Sara Joffe and Anne Cook. Survivors include her children, David Muhlrad and Cindi… Read more »