World

Uganda’s Jews are down to one meal a day because of East Africa’s famine

Gershom Sizomu, religious leader of the Abayudaya, in 2003. (Ken Hively/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

(JTA) — Uganda’s 2,000 Jews have long maintained a modest existence. They live in the east of the country in a hilly, rural area that lacks paved roads, consistent electricity and freely running water. But this year, the situation for Uganda’s Jewish community, called the Abayudaya, has worsened. Twenty million people… Read more »

Why this poster of a Jewish man and a Muslim woman kissing caused a scandal in Europe

A poster in the Dutch city of Rotterdam encouraging free choice of romantic partners, May 25, 2017. (Courtesy of Femme for Freedom)

  AMSTERDAM (JTA) — In a country where sex toys are displayed in shop windows and television commercials often feature nudity, a picture of a clothed, heterosexual couple kissing may not seem like the stuff of scandal. But precisely such an image — part of a poster campaign celebrating… Read more »

Chechnya’s Jewish community doesn’t exist — but it’s angry at Israel

Mosei Yunayev speaking at the International Islamic Mission Forum in Makhachkala, Russia, March 22, 2017. (Courtesy of the International Islamic Mission)

  (JTA) — While Russia’s mainstream Jewish leaders in Moscow firmly backed Israel’s actions in clashes this week with Palestinians at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, the small Jewish community of Chechnya broke ranks with them and boldly condemned the Jewish state’s “provocations” against Muslims in the holy city. At least that was… Read more »

Granddaughter of Holocaust survivors removed Auschwitz relics to use for art project

Tourists at Auschwitz photographing the "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate, July 2015. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum said it will file a complaint with the Polish prosecutor against an Israeli woman, the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, who removed relics from site. Rotem Bides, 27, an art student at the Beit Berl College in Kfar Saba, visited the Auschwitz… Read more »

6 reasons why Macron’s speech about the Holocaust in France was groundbreaking

Emmanuel Macron speaks at a ceremony commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Vel d'Hiv Holocaust roundup in Paris, July 16, 2017. (Kamil ZihnIoglu/AFP/Getty Images)

  PARIS (JTA) — It wasn’t the first time that a French president acknowledged his nation’s Holocaust-era guilt, but Emmanuel Macron’s speech Sunday was nonetheless groundbreaking in format, content and style. Delivered during a ceremony at the Vel d’Hiv Holocaust memorial monument exactly 75 years after French police officers rounded up 13,152… Read more »

Alan Gross, after spending 5 years in a Cuban prison, is starting over in Israel

Alan Gross with some of his favorite things -- a pastrami sandwich and a Cuban cigar -- at Loeb's Deli in Washington, D.C., July 12, 2017. (Ron Kampeas)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Alan Gross contacted me a couple of months ago over Facebook Messenger. There was something he thought I should know. I was pleasantly surprised. I’d only exchanged pleasantries with Gross in the several times I’d seen him since his release from a Cuban prison in December… Read more »

Yiddish comes alive in Warsaw every summer

Golda Tencer, standing, at a Shabbat dinner during the International Seminar in Yiddish Language and Culture in Warsaw, July 7, 2017. (Katarzyna Markusz)

WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — When Gołda Tencer, the director of the Shalom Foundation and the Jewish Theater in Warsaw, lit the Sabbath candles last Friday, she was accompanied by dozens of people from various countries. Though their mother tongues differed, the voices at the table were united by a common… Read more »

How this 650-year-old French synagogue withstood centuries of anti-Semitism

Women from the Jewish community of Carpentras chatting while preparing for Shabbat at the town's synagogue, July 7, 2017. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

CARPENTRAS, France (JTA) — The synagogue in this Provence town is Western Europe’s oldest functioning Jewish house of worship — and one of the prettiest on the continent. The Synagogue of Carpentras, which this year is celebrating its 650th anniversary, has a Baroque-style interior and a gold-ornamented hall with a blue… Read more »

This 400-year-old Jewish library survived Hitler and the Inquisition

Staff preparing the Ets Haim Jewish library in Amsterdam for a tour, May 17, 2017. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

  AMSTERDAM (JTA) —  Livraria Ets Haim is the world’s oldest functioning Jewish library. As such, it is no stranger to the prospect of imminent destruction. Founded in 1616 by Jews who fled Catholic persecution in Spain and Portugal, the three-room library is adjacent to Amsterdam’s majestic Portuguese Synagogue… Read more »

In Holland, the Nazis built a luxury camp to lull the Jews before murdering them

Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomon Jacobs' parents survived the Holocaust in hiding, and he often speaks to schoolchilren about the genocide at Westerbork. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

WESTERBORK, Netherlands (JTA) — Nothing about the footage that Rudolf Breslauer filmed here on May 30, 1944, suggests that it was taken inside one of Europe’s largest Nazi concentration camps. In the film by Breslauer, a German-Jewish inmate of the Westerbork camp in Holland’s northeast, prisoners are seen playing… Read more »

ANALYSIS India-Israel ties step out into the open

After 25 years of full diplomatic ties, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s three-day visit to Israel commencing Tuesday can be seen as the official coming out of the relationship between the two countries. While ties between Israel and India have grown exponentially since P.V Narasimha Rao and Yitzhak Shamir… Read more »

Modi: ‘Israel among India’s most important partners

Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi speaks July 4 at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. (Kobi Richter/TPS)

“India counts Israel as among it’s most important partners,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at Ben Gurion Airport Tuesday afternoon as he arrived for a three-day visit to mark 25 years since the establishment of full diplomatic ties between the countries. Thanking Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for a… Read more »

Meet Diego Schwartzman, the best Jewish tennis player on earth

Diego Schwartzman practices in Buenos Aires, Feb. 1, 2017. (Gabriel Rossi/LatinContent/Getty Images)

  (JTA) — When Wimbledon starts this week, no other Jewish tennis player will be seeded higher than Diego Schwartzman. The scrappy 24-year-old from Argentina, fresh off an impressive five-set duel with perennial star Novak Djokovic at the French Open earlier this month, is No. 37 in the Association of Tennis… Read more »

A French Jew’s killing provides a test for the new Macron administration

French President Emmanuel Macron at a news conference in Paris, June 12, 2017. (Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images)

  (JTA) – Before he threw Sarah Halimi to her death from a window of her third-story apartment in Paris, 27-year-old Kobili Traore called his Jewish neighbor “Satan” and cried out for Allah. These and other facts about the April 4 incident that shocked French Jewry are known from testimonies… Read more »

Jared Kushner’s family is a legend in this Belarus town

Marina Yarashuk, director of the Museum of Jewish Resistance of Novogrudak, at the museum on June 1, 2017. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

  NOVOGRUDOK, Belarus (JTA) — People in Jared Kushner’s ancestral town tend to speak very highly of President Donald Trump. That’s generally the norm in the former Soviet Union. After all, Trump’s style goes over well in this part of the world — a survey conducted in November in… Read more »

5 reasons why some British Jews are supporting the Labour Party, despite charges of anti-Semitism

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, second from right, speaking with guests during a National Holocaust Memorial Day event at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London, Jan. 26, 2017. (Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

(JTA) — Relations between British Jewry and the country’s Labour Party, which used to be their political home, appear to be at a historic low point. Ahead of the June 8 general elections in the United Kingdom, a Jewish Chronicle poll from last week put support for the center-left… Read more »

In Western Europe, Israel went from darling to divisive in 50 years

Protesters in Paris demonstrating against a new Israeli settlement in the West Bank, April 1, 2017. (Thomas Samson/AFP/Getty Images)

  AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Shortly after the outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967, Ronny Naftaniel was soliciting donations on the street and putting a lot of money into a box emblazoned with the words “for Israel.” An Amsterdam Jew who was 19 that year, Naftaniel was one of… Read more »

In Manchester, Jews have been preparing for an attack for years

Emergency responders arrive at the Manchester Arena following a bomb attack at an Ariana Grande concert, May 22, 2017. (Dave Thompson/Getty Images)

  (JTA) — Britain’s bloodiest terrorist attack in over a decade occurred Monday just two miles from Rabbi Yisroel Cohen’s synagogue. Yet one day after the deadly bombing in Manchester, Cohen told JTA he has no intention of changing security arrangements at his congregation. In fact Cohen, a Chabad… Read more »