A security camera hangs across the street from the Park East Synagogue in New York City, March 3, 2017. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Here’s the sad paradox of the shooting nearly one year ago at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue: The killing of 11 worshippers, the worst attack on Jews in U.S. history, hit a community that was one of the best prepared to handle such an assault. In… Read more »
The doors of the Tree of Life synagogue feature memorials surrounding the building nearly a year after the attack there that killed 11 worshippers. (Grace Yagel)
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — As this city’s Jewish community celebrated Rosh Hashanah this week, the Tree of Life synagogue stood closed, its doors blocked by a chain-link fence. A brown, wilted wreath hung on a tree near the synagogue, where a gunman killed 11 worshippers last year in the worst… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — The number of hate crimes against Jews in New York City has risen significantly over the first nine months of this year, part of a citywide rise in such offenses. The New York Police Department has reported 311 total hate crimes through September, as opposed… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — The Jewish Telegraphic Agency has launched a Hebrew-language website and syndication service aimed at the Israeli public. The service features original Hebrew articles and videos with Hebrew translations of items published in English by JTA and adapted for Israeli audiences. JTA’s new Hebrew news site… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — Police said a Jewish woman reported being harassed in Brooklyn on Rosh Hashanah. The 22-year-old said that she was approached on Sunday evening by a female teenager who “pulled her scarf and wig from her head,” a New York Police detective, Annette Shelton, told the… Read more »
(JTA) — Eric Pleskow, who escaped the Nazis to become a film executive whose movies won the Academy Award for best picture seven times, has died. He was 95. Pleskow was the president of the United Artists studio when it took home the best picture Oscars for “One Flew… Read more »
(JTA) — Emily Austen, a reporter who was fired by Fox Sports in Florida for derogatory comments about Jews and minorities, has been hired by the evangelical Christian Liberty University. Fox dismissed Austen in 2016 as a sideline reporter for the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team and the Orlando… Read more »
(JTA) — A Jewish death row inmate in Texas who says his judge was anti-Semitic has appealed to the Supreme Court. Randy Halprin is set to be executed on Oct. 10. He was part of the “Texas 7” group of prisoners who escaped from a prison in the state… Read more »
Julie Robertson painted a mural of Hannah Senesh in downtown San Diego. (Courtesy of Robertson)
(JTA) — Hannah Senesh may seem an unlikely motivation for Japanese-born artist Julie Robertson. But the 35-year-old Christian artist, who just spent four days painting a 30-by-40-foot mural of the late Jewish poet, learned about Senesh earlier this year and was struck by her bravery. A national hero in… Read more »
Rabbi Sanford Akselrad has been leading Congregation Ner Tamid in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson since 1988. (Josefin Dolsten)
LAS VEGAS (JTA) — Congregation Ner Tamid is located a half an hour drive away from the Las Vegas Strip, where each luxury hotel seems more extravagant than the next and even on a Sunday morning people can be found crowding around blackjack tables and sitting in front of… Read more »
Ceen Gabbai was born and raised as a Jew in Iraq, and received asylum in the United States in 2015. She now lives in Brooklyn. (Courtesy of Gabbai)
NEW YORK (JTA) — When Ceen Gabbai argued with her first-grade teacher about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, she didn’t realize how big of a risk she was taking. The year was 2000 and students across the world held strong opinions about the Second Intifada, an outbreak of violence that claimed… Read more »
A Belgian politician presented this painting featuring a large swastika at the Bog-Art Gallery in Brussels. (Courtesy of LBCA)
BRUSSELS (JTA) — At a parade here in March, revelers danced to a song about Jewish greed while standing on a float shaped like an Orthodox Jewish man with a rat on his shoulder holding money. In August, an op-ed in a major Belgian newspaper called Jews in Israel… Read more »
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff answer questions at a news conference in Washington, Oct. 2, 2019. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Donald Trump accused Rep. Adam Schiff, the Jewish Democrat who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, of treason and called for his arrest. “Shifty Schiff” is a “lowlife,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “He should resign from office in disgrace and frankly they should look at… Read more »
Children will be able to release their sins the really old-fashioned way by sending them away with a goat at Temple Emanu-El’s Yom Kippur morning family service, Wednesday, Oct. 9 at 8:30 a.m. During Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, repentance is achieved by prayer, repentance, and fasting, but… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Liberman, who prevented Netanyahu from forming a coalition government following elections in April, will meet to discuss a unity government. The meeting, confirmed by Liberman in a social media post, is scheduled for Thursday morning in Jerusalem. Liberman said even… Read more »
(JTA) — The pre-indictment hearings in one of three separate corruption cases involving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commenced on Wednesday. Lawyers for Netanyahu appeared at the hearings in Jerusalem without their client, who was scheduled to participate in talks in an effort to to build a governing coalition.… Read more »
The Jewish New Year is a time for reflection and commitment toward a more just world. The six Holocaust survivors we feature in this issue are a few among the approximately 75 survivors currently living in Southern Arizona, most of whom were children or teens when the war broke… Read more »
Jewish History Museum/Holocaust History Center staff Bryan Davis, left, and Josie Shapiro, center, unfurl a new banner on the fence in front of the museum Aug. 12 while Rabbi Stephanie Aaron, right, looks on. (Debe Campbell/AJP)
Tucson’s Jewish History Museum and Holocaust History Center will launch a migrant justice initiative in conjunction with its new annual exhibition, “Asylum Seeking at the U.S.-Mexico Border,” which opens in the Allen and Marianne Langer Contemporary Human Rights Gallery on Oct. 24. As with past annual exhibits, programming, and… Read more »
Tucsonans Joel Alpert and Nancy Lefkowitz attended the Synagogue Square Memorial dedication in Yurburg, Lithuania, on July 19. (Courtesy Joel Alpert)
The town of Yurburg, Lithuania, dedicated a new Synagogue Square Memorial on July 19. Tucson genealogist and author Joel Alpert and his wife, Nancy Lefkowitz along with 10 of his relatives from Israel, Canada, and the United States, represented the descendants of emigres from the once-thriving Jewish community. “It… Read more »
Ricardo Santana Velázquez, the Mexican consul in Nogales, Arizona (back row, center), with the Jewish Council for Public Affairs delegation at the consular office on Sept. 9. (Courtesy Melanie Roth Gorelick)
A 23-member delegation from 12 states recently completed a fact-finding mission trip to the Arizona-Mexico border, conducted by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, which is the national network hub of 125 Jewish Community Relations Councils around the country and 17 national Jewish agencies. The Jewish History Museum hosted… Read more »
