World

Dutch survivor’s diary called an Anne Frank story with a ‘happy’ ending

Carry Ulreich, right, and her older sister, Rachel, in a photograph taken during their time in hiding in Rotterdam during the Nazi occupation. (Boekencentrum/Mozaïek)

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — A Holocaust survivor dubbed “Rotterdam’s Anne Frank” in her native Netherlands published her wartime diary, which she wrote while hiding in the bombed-out city. “At Night I Dream of Peace,” the Dutch-language diary of 89-year-old Carry Ulreich, hit bookstores in the Netherlands last week. The book generated strong… Read more »

Joining peers in Poland, local fire chief takes lessons of Auschwitz to heart

Jonathan McMahan, Rural/Metro Fire Department chief in Pima County, was recently in Poland as one of seven U.S. fire chiefs invited to present a symposium on American firefighting expertise at the Main School of the Fire Service in Warsaw. This was the first delegation of U.S. fire chiefs invited… Read more »

In Amsterdam, 2 Jewish-American comics fight dirty for Hillary

Pep Rosenfeld, left, and Greg Shapiro portray Donald Trump supporters at their comedy club in Amsterdam, May 11, 2016. (Courtesy of Boom Chicago)

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — In the Dutch capital’s main American comedy club, two middle-aged Jewish men wrestle while wearing blond wigs until one of them pretends to rip out his opponent’s still-beating heart. This violent portrayal of a Hillary Clinton victory over Donald Trump is the closing scene of a… Read more »

After bombings, New Yorkers cop an Israeli attitude: ‘Stuff’ happens

A New York City police officer standing guard outside Grand Central Station in New York City, Sept. 20, 2016. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — “I heard the explosion, then I went to the deli.” In the hours after the bombings Saturday in New York and on the Jersey Shore, the phrase became an instant slogan for New Yorkers’ purported coolness under fire. Attributed to a witness of the bombing that… Read more »

Burkini debate in France exposes a divide in its Jewish community

A Tunisian Muslim woman, right, wearing a burkini swimsuit wading in the water on a beach near Tunis, Aug. 16, 2016. (Fethi Belaid/ AFP/Getty Images)

(JTA) — Like their constituents, the mainstream representatives of French Jewry are not known for passing up opportunities to express their opinion on subjects of national debate. And Jewish institutions in France, like those in the United States, regularly comment on a host of issues, including divisive ones that lie… Read more »

Lacking status in Israel, Jews in Uganda see new synagogue as ‘our Jerusalem’

In anticipation of the construction of a new synagogue in Nabagoye, Uganda, the women and children there were given the honor of transferring the Torahs from the old synagogue to a temporary home. (Courtesy of Be’chol Lashon)

  (JTA) — When there was no more space in the synagogue in Nabagoye, Uganda, congregants would go outside, gathering under trees. But the branches weren’t enough to shield them from the rain during the East African country’s wet seasons, which last about half the year. A new 7,000-square-foot… Read more »

HIGH HOLIDAYS FEATURE 5776: The year in review

Aly Raisman posing after winning a silver medal in the women's individual all-around competition at the Rio Olympics, Aug. 11, 2016. (Getty Images)

(JTA) — A stabbing and car-ramming epidemic in Israel that some called a third intifada was among the most dominant Jewish stories of the past year. But 5776 was also notable for the release of spy Jonathan Pollard after 30 years in prison, the communal fallout from the Iran nuclear deal, a historic… Read more »

This Israeli and Palestinian duo owns Berlin’s hippest hummus joint

Jalil Dabit, left, an Arab Christian from Ramle, and Oz Ben David, who grew up Jewish in Beersheba, opened the restaurant together. (Toby Axelrod)

BERLIN (JTA) – In a corner of former East Berlin, where shabby, red brick buildings meet cobblestone streets, lies a new Promised Land. Kanaan — a casual, vegetarian Middle Eastern restaurant named for the biblical lands before they were conquered by the Israelites — is something of a dream come true. And that’s not just… Read more »

Memory of Holocaust in Lithuania saved from oblivion by Israeli soccer agent and Lithuanian writer

Relatives of Holocaust victims walk the memorial march in the Lithuanian town of Molėtai (Malat) , Aug, 29, 2016. (Malat Memorial Foundation)

When Israeli soccer agent Tzvi Kritzer decided to build a monument in the Lithuanian town of Molėtai (Malat in Yiddish), where most of his family was murdered during the Holocaust, and to bring the relatives of the victims to the town for a memorial march, he was told to… Read more »

Burkini ban is great for business, says Israeli-French maker of modest swimsuits

Sea Secret’s “Magic Marine” modest swimsuit (Courtesy of Sea Secret)

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — According to the latest tally, at least 30 French municipalities have banned the product that the Paris-born businesswoman Yardena G. sells for a living. Yardena, a haredi Orthodox mother of nine from Jerusalem, owns the Sea Secret fashion label of modest swimwear for devoutly religious women.… Read more »

Once a prop for anti-Semites, the Talmud makes a comeback in Russia

The cover of a new Russian translation of the Talmud (Courtesy of Knizhniki publishing house)

(JTA) — A century ago, passages from the Talmud were translated into Russian to be used as evidence in the anti-Semitic show trial of Menahem Mendel Beilis, a Jew charged with — and eventually acquitted of – murdering a Christian boy. The prosecution in that 1915 trial, which was decried… Read more »

Ukraine’s honoring of war criminals leaves its Jews uneasy — and divided

A statue of Stepan Bandera in Lviv, Ukraine, September 2014. (Courtesy of Andrey Syasko)

(JTA) — When Vladimir Putin grabbed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, the Russian president claimed it was to protect minorities from anti-Semitic fascists whom Putin maintained were behind the revolution that year that ousted his ally in Kiev, former President Viktor Yanukovych. But a physicist named Josef Zissels, who heads one… Read more »

With U.S.-Cuba ties restored, family joins Tucson man on long-awaited homecoming visit

Tucsonan Billie Kozolchyk, right, with Adela Dworin, vice president of the Patronato de la casa de la comunidad Hebrea de Cuba in Havana, the equivalent of a Jewish federation in the United States. (Courtesy Billie Kozolchyk)

So we went to Cuba. Big deal, you say? Everybody’s going to Cuba. It seems not a single U.S. institution, big or small, isn’t arranging tours and oh yes, cruises, too. But our trip was different. My husband, Boris, had left his native Cuba pre-Fidel in 1956, to continue… Read more »

Why Spain is standing up to BDS — for now

Demonstrators protest outside the Spanish Government Delegation in Barcelona, Oct. 20, 2015. (Albert Llop/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

(JTA) — Only last year, Spain was still the undisputed bastion for the BDS movement in Europe. Some 50 Spanish municipalities had passed resolutions in recent years endorsing BDS — an acronym for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel — more than in any other European country. Relying on backing from a… Read more »

Venice welcomes back Shylock in marking its Jewish history

Shaul Bassi, the Merchant in Venice Project Director and coordinator of the Venice Ghetto 500 anniversary committee, on the Ghetto Nuovo bridge in Venice, Italy. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)

VENICE, Italy (JTA) – Last week, an international, multilingual cast performed Shakespeare’s controversial play, “The Merchant of Venice,” in the secluded main plaza of the city’s historic Jewish Ghetto. It was the first time the play was performed in the iconic location, where some of the action takes place. Enclosed by tall tenements and the… Read more »

For Jews of Nice, terrorist attack comes as no surprise

A French flag flies at half mast at an empty beach on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice a day after a terrorist attack in the French city killed 84, July 15, 2016. (David Ramos/Getty Images)

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — To the millions of tourists who visit Nice annually, the city in southeast France is an ultimate holiday destination that offers inviting beaches and luxury casinos, stunning architecture and world-class museums. Sandwiched between the Maritime Alps and the Mediterranean Sea, Nice is France’s largest tourist destination after Paris, with 5 million… Read more »

This Lithuanian concentration camp is now a wedding venue

A boy playing soccer at the entrance to the former concentration camp known as the Seventh Fort in Kaunas, Lithuania, July 12, 2016. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

KAUNAS, Lithuania (JTA) — In this drab city 55 miles west of Vilnius, there are few heritage sites as mysterious and lovely looking as the Seventh Fort. This 18-acre red-brick bunker complex, which dates to 1882, features massive underground passages that connect its halls and chambers. Above ground, the… Read more »

Can a hobbled EU live up to its promise to combat anti-Semitism and racism?

British Prime Minister Theresa May, left, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel speak to the media following talks at the Chancellery in Berlin, July 20, 2016. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

(JTA) — When the late Austro-Hungarian aristocrat Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi attended church on Good Friday, his father would famously cause a scene, storming out when the liturgy came to the anti-Semitic exhortation “Let us also pray for the faithless Jews.” Such protest was unusual in 19th-century Austria-Hungary, where anti-Semitism and other forms of racism were de… Read more »

Russian synagogue with dark past invites Pokemon hunters to toast its revival

Daniel Gurevich holds a bottle of wine he won for catching a Pokemon at the Grand Choral Synagogue of St. Petersburg, July 2016. (Courtesy of Jewish News Petersburg)

(JTA) — As the Pokemon Go phenomenon grows, some institutions connected to European Jewry’s darkest hour have taken precautions against it. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum in Poland has banned the addictive smartphone game, in which players viewing their environments through their device’s camera run in search of… Read more »

After Elie Wiesel, can anyone unite American Jews?

Elie Wiesel arriving for a roundtable discussion on the Iran nuclear deal on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., March 2, 2015. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Being an American Jew, more than anything else, means remembering the Holocaust. That’s what nearly three quarters of Jewish Americans said, according to the Pew Research Center’s landmark 2013 study on American Jewry. Asked to pick attributes “essential” to being Jewish, more Jews said Holocaust remembrance than leading an ethical… Read more »