Cnaan Liphshiz and wife Iris celebrate their wedding in the Netherlands, July 2, 2013. (Courtesy of Liphshiz)
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — My wife and I were married roughly 5,000 diapers ago, and she’s still waiting for me to propose. I know this because she reminds me every anniversary. To be clear, ours was no shotgun wedding. Iris and I were hitched in a civil marriage in Holland… Read more »
Most of Paraguay’s 1,000 Jews live in Asuncion, where B’nai Jacob’s Torah has found a new home. (Erin Jones-Avni)
One family after another hurried through Erin Jones-Avni’s front door, anxious to get their first glimpse of the new arrival — to admire its ornate silver breastplate and touch its satiny mantle. “People just kept coming, and they’d make a beeline for the Torah,” she told JTA from her… Read more »
The six Ulma children, seen here with their mother during their last summer alive, were killed in 1944 after watching their parents' execution for harboring Jews. (Courtesy of the Ulma Museum)
MARKOWA, Poland — Memorial plaques bearing the names of Poles killed for rescuing Jews line the pathway leading to a small, austere structure built into a hillside in this rural village in southeastern Poland. In the center courtyard, a large slab is inscribed to the memory of Jewish victims… Read more »
Mumbai, India – The Jewish community of India, together with American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, is responding to the destructive floods in Kerala, providing food and clothing to hundreds of families hard-hit by the disaster. With a presence in India since 1950, JDC and its partners in the Jewish community will provide… Read more »
The view down an alley off the street where Nazi camp guard Jakiw Palij lived in Queens, N.Y., Dec. 4, 2017. (Celeste Sloman for the Washington Post)
(JTA) — A former guard at a Nazi concentration camp was deported to Germany overnight from the United States, where he had lived for decades. Jakiw Palij, 95, had lived in Queens, New York. He served as a guard at the Trawniki concentration camp near Lublin, Poland, during World… Read more »
(L-R) Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Board Chair Shelly Silverman, JFSA 2019 Campaign Chair Melissa Goldfinger, JFSA Senior Vice President Fran Katz, and JFSA Women’s Philanthropy Campaign Chair Leslie Glaze visit the Berlin Wall, July 15. (Melissa Goldfinger)
Each year, the Jewish Federations of North America invites professionals and lay leaders to participate in a mission that highlights the unique challenges, programs and impact of federations’ overseas funding. In mid-July, Melissa Goldfinger, Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona 2019 Campaign chair; Leslie Glaze, JFSA Women’s Philanthropy Campaign chair;… Read more »
A look at the Avocado Rose dish at The Avocado Show. (Courtesy of The Avocado Show)
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Last year, Ron Simpson was still managing talent for a living. But within just a few months Simpson, a 34-year-old Jewish marketing professional and producer from Amsterdam with no experience in running a restaurant, launched an international chain of eateries with a partner. It is so… Read more »
Evelien Gans was one of the Netherlands’ foremost scholars on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. (Courtesy of Daniel Staal)
AMSTERDAM (JTA) – On July 19, Evelien Gans, one of the Netherlands’ foremost scholars on anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, jumped to her death from her fourth-story Amsterdam apartment, where she lived alone. Gans, 67, a retired professor at the University of Amsterdam who had struggled with clinical depression for… Read more »
Tom Furstenberg, right, and a fellow congregant carry the Torah ark out of the Great Synagogue of Deventer, July 30, 2018. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
DEVENTER, Netherlands (JTA) — Four years ago, Tom Furstenberg proudly carried into his synagogue its first Torah scroll since the Holocaust, when local Nazis destroyed the building’s interior. The scroll’s introduction in 2014 was an important moment for the Beth Shoshana Masorti community that Furstenberg helped establish in 2010… Read more »
Imran Khan at the "Rule of Law: The Case of Pakistan” conference in Berlin, Germany, Nov. 26, 2009. (Stephan Röhl/Flickr)
(JTA) — The election of former cricket star Imran Khan as Pakistan’s new prime minister has raised eyebrows across the globe. He has promised a “new Pakistan,” running on a light-on-policy nationalistic anti-corruption platform. Khan, 65, “is known for running a team of one, making impulsive decisions, contradicting himself and then… Read more »
Campaigners from the Campaign Against Antisemitism demonstrate outside the Labour Party headquarters in London, April 8, 2018. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
(JTA) — It’s been nearly three years since Jeremy Corbyn became the leader of Britain’s Labour Party, and he has riled British Jews more than any other politician in recent history. Last week, Great Britain’s three leading Jewish newspapers united in publishing a front-page editorial warning that a… Read more »
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg preparing to administer the Oath of Allegiance to candidates for U.S. citizenship at the New-York Historical Society in New York City, April 10, 2018. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she hopes to remain on the court for another five years. “I’m now 85,” Ginsburg said, according to CNN. “My senior colleague, Justice John Paul Stevens, he stepped down when he was 90, so think I have about at least five… Read more »
(Chelsea Football Club)
Pitch for Hope competition calls on youth in UK, US, and Israel to propose creative ideas for curbing racism and anti-Semitism in sports NEW YORK — Chelsea Football Club and The World Jewish Congress on July 9 launched the international Pitch for Hope competition, the first stage of a three-pronged joint… Read more »
Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his platform would not remove content denying the Holocaust, but that the content would be less likely to show up in someone’s news feed. The Lawfare Project filed takedown notices this week against Facebook posts denying the Holocaust and containing anti-Semitic material,… Read more »
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, greets his Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres in Moscow, 2012. (Office of the President of Russia)
(JTA) — While American politicians and pundits fumed at President Donald Trump’s performance at his much-anticipated meeting last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin, lost in the clamor was one small but crucial moment: Israel emerged from Helsinki a winner. Trump said that he and Putin had reached a “really good conclusion” for… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Knesset passed controversial legislation making Israel the “nation-state of the Jewish people,” angering groups in Israel and the Diaspora. The so-called Nationality Law enshrines in Israel’s quasi-constitutional Basic Law that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. It passed early Thursday morning after hours… Read more »
Yitzhak Melamed was beaten by a Palestinian and then by German police officers in a Bonn park. (Courtesy of Melamed)
(JTA) — Yitzhak Melamed was accosted by an anti-Semite and then beaten by German police while in the city of Bonn for a lecture last week. The attacks left the Jewish professor’s face bleeding, his glasses broken — and his will untouched. In October, Melamed will return to Germany.… Read more »
Isaac Shapiro, now 87, lives in New York. (Ben Sales)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Growing up in Imperial Japan during World War II, Isaac Shapiro’s best friend was a member of the Hitler Youth. The friend wore the organization’s brown shirt uniform to their international school every day, but not because he wanted to — he was German and Japan… Read more »
The brainchild of a 39-year-old Brooklyn businessman, Wrapp enables users to get tefillin for prayers for free. (Tefillinwrapp.com)
AMSTERDAM (JTA) — You can call a taxi, order a hamburger, rent a film and buy a book with a few clicks of a smartphone. So why shouldn’t it be as easy to score a set of tefillin? That, at least, was the question that led to the launch last… Read more »
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a joint news conference following their summit in Helsinki, Finland, July 16, 2018. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The media, Congress, the international community — just about everybody is reeling after the joint news conference on Monday in Helsinki bringing together President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Among other remarkable declarations, Trump seemed to agree with Putin by doubting the U.S. intelligence… Read more »
