News

(JTA) — In 2015, Ukraine’s president signed a law whose critics say stifles debate on the historical record of World War II and whitewashes local perpetrators of the Holocaust. Law 2538-1 criminalized any rhetoric insulting to the memory of anti-communist partisans. And it celebrates the legacy of such combatants – ostensibly including… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a simple, straightforward message this week when he toured Israel’s border with Syria and Lebanon with top security officials. “Our face is turned toward peace, we are ready for any eventuality, and I don’t suggest anyone test us,” he said… Read more »

NORFOLK, Va. (JTA) — The Norfolk Democratic Party Committee is meeting on a Saturday and Picadilly, a breakfast joint propped along a highway in this scrubbed-clean hardscrabble town perched on the Chesapeake Bay, is loud with the clatter of dishes, cutlery and politics. Until, that is, Elaine Luria is… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told a Jewish audience that she would serve on the U.S. Supreme Court as long as she felt up to it. Ginsburg, appearing Thursday at a Forward event at Adas Israel synagogue in Washington, D.C., appeared to confirm recent reports that she… Read more »

(JTA) — President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel made it into his State of the Union speech. “Last month, I also took an action endorsed unanimously by the Senate just months before: I recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” he said to applause, mostly from… Read more »

TOMSK, Russia (JTA) — When two strange men approached 8-year-old Herzl Tsam in an alley of his hometown in what is now Ukraine, he knew that he had to run as fast as his legs could carry him. In 1851, as a Jewish boy from a poor family in… Read more »

WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — Debate over a Polish law that proposes to outlaw rhetoric blaming Poland for Nazi crimes has prompted a wave of anti-Semitic comments in the Polish media. RMF, one of the largest Polish commercial radio stations, suspended a journalist who wrote about the “war with the Jews.”… Read more »

Brittan Heller will bring personal experience as a victim along with extensive professional international law and cybercrime experience to her Tucson presentation, “Pulling the Plug on Online Anti-Semitism & Bigotry,” on Thursday, Feb. 8 at 6 p.m. at the Harvey & Deanna Evenchik Center for Jewish Philanthropy, 3718 E.… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — If there’s overlap between Hillel and the National Council of Jewish Women, it’s in two areas: defending Israel and combating violence against women on campus. Leaders of the campus Jewish organization took a look at the record of Kenneth Marcus, President Donald Trump’s nominee to run… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — The Orthodox Union will not penalize its member synagogues that already employ women as clergy, but it has reaffirmed a policy that prohibits other synagogues from hiring women in rabbinic positions. A statement adopted at the umbrella Orthodox synagogue association’s board meeting last night and… Read more »

(JTA) — The world is about to revolve around Pyeongchang, a mountainous county in the northern half of South Korea, for the upcoming Winter Olympics. Jewish fans won’t have quite as many standout athletes to cheer for this year as they did in 2016, when multiple American members of the… Read more »

(JTA) — Donald Trump is just the man to get an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal done. Just ask Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister was gushing last week about Trump’s negotiating team, which is led by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. “The thing the people don’t realize is that these people… Read more »

(JTA) — “Nothing matters.” You hear that a lot these days. You hear it when The Wall Street Journal reports that the president’s personal lawyer paid a porn actress $130,000, at the height of the presidential campaign, so she would stay silent about an alleged affair she’d had with Donald Trump. Or… Read more »

(JTA) — Though the Jewish community in South Korea is small, Jews visiting the country to compete in or watch the Winter Olympic Games won’t have to skimp on kosher food or Shabbat programming. The country’s Chabad emissary is setting up a pop-up restaurant in Pyeongchang County, the site of… Read more »

  (JTA) — Avraham Yago, a married father of five who works as a linguistics professor at the University of Abidjan in the West African nation of Cote d’Ivoire, has visited Israel four times to learn about Judaism and practice his Hebrew. Yago, 64, grew up without any religious affiliation.… Read more »

(JTA) — The Polish parliament’s bill to criminalize the use of the term “Polish death camps” prompted an avalanche of criticism in Israel by officials and individuals who warned that it is excessive and risks stifling research on the Holocaust. Following the bill’s passing Friday in the Sejm, or the lower… Read more »

  TIRANA, Albania (JTA) — Most anywhere else in Nazi-occupied Europe, an encounter with police would have likely sealed the fate of Jewish refugees like Nissim and Sarah Aladjem and their 10-year-old son, Aron. Instead, when the family was detained by police in the Muslim nation of Albania 75… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — During a combative news conference in early August, White House adviser Stephen Miller told reporters that the United States should prioritize immigrants who speak English. “Does the applicant speak English?” Miller asked, describing a bill to reduce the overall number of immigrants and reform immigration… Read more »

Rabbi David Saperstein

Named America’s most influential rabbi by Newsweek in 2009, Ambassador Rabbi David Saperstein will be the scholar-in residence for Temple Emanu-El’s annual Rabbi Albert T. Bilgray Memorial Lecture Series, Feb. 8-10. Speaking on “Freedom and Justice in the World Today,” Saperstein will draw upon a career of service to… Read more »

When Mike Pence moved to Washington earlier this year, he and his wife took with them a framed phrase they had for years hung over their fireplace in their Indiana home, and then over the fireplace in the governor’s mansion in that state. Now it hangs over the mantle… Read more »