News

Jacky Rosen is interviewed after rallying supporters at a get-out-the-vote event at a Nevada state Democratic Party field office in Las Vegas, Nov. 4, 2018. Rosen won her Senate race. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

(JTA) — Tuesday night’s midterm elections were hailed as a victory for gender parity, as an unprecedented number of women won bids to serve in Congress. More than 100 women were elected to serve in the House of Representatives and the Senate, according to final vote tallies and projections. It’s a… Read more »

KALININGRAD, Russia (JTA) — Walking to school and back, Michael Wieck twice a day would pass by one of Europe’s largest and most spectacular Jewish places of worship: Koenigsberg’s New Synagogue. The mammoth shul was built in 1896 in the Aesopian style in the bustling port city that is… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) – For decades as an adult, Lore Mayerfeld kept a doll on a chair in an off-limits bedroom or high on a shelf. Her children – and later her grandchildren and great-grandchildren – knew not to play with the toy for fear of breaking it. Dressed in… Read more »

ECLECTIC CAFÉ MARK SMITH, owner Born and raised in Tucson, Mark Smith is a Catalina High School graduate. He started working in restaurants as a teenager and took that training to open the Eclectic Café in October 1980 when he was 24. Smith brings a variety of flavors to… Read more »

Jared Polis in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., May 24, 2016. Polis was elected the first Jewish governor of Colorado. (Al Drago/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images)

(JTA) —  Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections held Tuesday, with Jewish Congress members poised to take key leadership roles. Republicans looked to increase their majority in the Senate. Five Jewish Democrats are set to chair key House committees, including three representatives from… Read more »

On Saturday, I received a text: “why do they hate us so much?” It was from my daughter, a first-year student at college who is thousands of miles away from home but, at that moment, was reaching out for comfort, wishing she was curled up on the couch beside… Read more »

Kim Schrier won her race in the 8th District of Washington state. (Screenshot from YouTube)

(JTA) — In the final weeks of the midterm election campaign, Republicans in six states targeted their Democratic opponents with attacks many saw as echoing anti-Semitic tropes. The attacks — mostly involving pictures of Jewish candidates clutching money — were denounced and debated. But were they effective? Answer: Yes… Read more »

PITTSBURGH (JTA) — Bernice and Sylvan Simon were married in the sanctuary of Tree of Life Congregation 62 years ago. Week after week they attended services there, chatting with the Holocaust survivor who sat a row in front of them. And on Saturday, hours before they were to gather with their… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — In 2014, Lacey Schwartz Delgado made headlines around the world for a documentary in which she explored a shocking family secret. “Little White Lie” tells Schwartz Delgado’s real-life story of being raised in a white Jewish family in the upstate New York town of Woodstock. Though… Read more »

(JTA) — My father, whose own father changed his unpronounceable last name to Carroll when he came to America, would often tell a story about job hunting in the late 1940s and 50s. It was only after the interview that the men across the desk would ask, “And all… Read more »

(JTA) — Jaime Guttenberg and Meadow Pollack shared many similarities. Both were brown-haired and bright-eyed girls, beloved by friends and family. Both were passionate about their hobbies. Jaime, 14, spent her free time dancing and volunteering with special needs children. Meadow, 18, was a girly girl who loved the… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Elaine Luria spent nearly 20 years in the U.S. Navy, the first female sailor to spend her entire career on combat ships. Her hitch included the first seven years of her daughter’s life — the former commander told JTA earlier this year that she communicated daily with her… Read more »

TORONTO (JTA) — In late October, Americans saw what happened when anti-Semitism rears its head in the most devastating way. But while a synagogue in Pittsburgh is the victim of a deadly hate-filled attack, one in Toronto is being rescued with kindness from unexpected quarters: an Iranian-American developer who… Read more »

(JTA) — Robert Bowers, the man held in the shooting deaths of 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27, belonged to an online community where he frequently railed against Jews and immigrants. That social media site, Gab, came under closer scrutiny last week. Created two years ago as a… Read more »

(JTA) — Rose Mallinger, the oldest victim in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, was remembered Friday at her funeral as a loving and sharp-witted woman who was a fixture in the Jewish community. Hundreds of mourners attended the service at the Rodef Shalom synagogue. Mallinger was the final of the 11… Read more »

(JTA) — Six days ago, on Shabbat, Rabbi Jonathan Perlman was hiding in a pitch-black storage closet as one of his congregants was shot dead in front of him. The time since has been filled with funerals, counseling congregants and figuring out how to move forward as a community,… Read more »

Prayers for peace, kindness and love, for a better world for ourselves and our children, rang out at the Tucson Jewish Community Center Monday night, as more than 1,200 people of all faiths came together for a candlelight vigil in memory of the 11 Jews killed in an attack… Read more »

(JTA) — Before he shot dead 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue, Robert Bowers blamed one Jewish organization: HIAS, an immigrant aid group that has been helping refugees since the 1880s. “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people,” he wrote on his website. “I can’t sit by and watch… Read more »

  PITTSBURGH (JTA) — Cecil Rosenthal would always ask after your sick mother or inquire about your marriage — or divorce. His brother, David, a jokester, loved the police and every year would buy the same sunglasses with mirrored lenses. At a moving ceremony Tuesday, relatives stood before a… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The deadly shooting at a Conservative synagogue in Pittsburgh has underlined tensions in Israel over the haredi Orthodox rabbinic establishment’s disenfranchisement of the Diaspora’s non-Orthodox Jewish streams. Following Saturday’s rampage by a gunman that left 11 worshippers dead, an Israeli government minister and the country’s opposition… Read more »