Refugee children visit a fire station in Berlin, September 2015. (Judith Kessler)
BERLIN (JTA) — When supporters of the anti-immigrant PEGIDA movement and right-wing extremists in the former East Germany started demonstrating by the tens of thousands this year against foreigners and “American Zionist” policies, I got mad. When the first refugee homes in Germany were set on fire, I was shocked. When… Read more »
The driver, Mohammed, holding an etrog. (Ben Sales)
ASSADS, Morocco (JTA) — We had to cross the gorge, and the only way was to walk single file on a narrow concrete gutter, maybe a foot wide, that bridged the two cliffs. Below us was a long, perilous drop onto the rocky depths. I was traveling deep into the rural communities of… Read more »
Don Francisco -- born Mario Luis Kreutzberger Blumenfeld -- celebrating the 50th anniversary of his record-making show "Sabado Gigante." (Courtesy of Univision)
(JTA) — On Saturday, the Spanish language television network Univision will host the final broadcast of “Sábado Gigante.” With 53 years on TV, the world’s longest-running variety show is an eclectic, strange mashup of a game show, a talk show and live entertainment. There are singing competitions — the poor-performing contestants are… Read more »
Merchants walk a dirt path between the coastal city of Agadir, Morocco, and the highland etrog groves in Assads, Sept. 8, 2015. (Ben Sales)
ASSADS, Morocco (JTA) — Why the Jews want etrogs, Mohammed Douch does not entirely understand. What he does know is that they are his main customers. Each August and September, Jewish merchants come from around the world to his remote grove in the highlands of Morocco — an hourlong hike through… Read more »
Migrants cross into Hungary as they walk over railroad tracks at the Serbian border, Sept. 8. (Dan Kirkwood/Getty Images
Editor’s note: For the local response, see JFSA facilitates gift for Syrian refugee aid (JTA) — When he looks into the tired eyes of the Syrian refugees now flooding Europe’s borders, Guy Sorman is reminded of his father, Nathan, who fled Germany for France just months before Adolf Hitler… Read more »
Tourists at Auschwitz photographing the "Arbeit Macht Frei" gate, July 2015. (Ruth Ellen Gruber)
(JTA) – Pawel Sawicki gets to his desk every morning by 7, but he works no regular office job. Sawicki is an information officer at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Memorial and Museum, the sprawling complex in southern Poland that encompasses the largest and most notorious Nazi death camp. More than 1.1 million… Read more »
The Vilnius Palace of Concerts and Sports, a complex that was shut down a decade ago, is the site of a proposed $25 million conference center. (Flickr Commons)
VILNIUS, Lithuania (JTA) – It’s one of the most intriguing sites in all of Vilnius: a massive Soviet-style sports complex built in 1971 that since its closure in 2004 has become a run-down haven for vagrants. Now the Lithuanian government has some grand plans to renovate the rotting behemoth and turn… Read more »
Rabbi Shlomo Neeman, left, founder of the Kiev-based Zionist Seminary, and staff at the Tchelet summer camp in the Republic of Georgia, Aug. 19, 2015. (Eliyahu Yurovsky)
TBILISI, Georgia (JTA) — Until April of last year, Julia Podinovskaya felt like she had a pretty good handle on where her life was going. Born to a middle-class Jewish family in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, Podinovskaya, who is in her 20s, was volunteering with the local Jewish community… Read more »
Matisyahu performing at the Rototom Festival in Benicassim, Spain, Aug. 22, 2015. (YouTube)
(JTA) — A Spanish music festival’s recent decision to rescind its invitation to the American reggae singer Matisyahu, after he declined to endorse a Palestinian state, brought international attention to a phenomenon that many European Jews have been feeling for years: that they are being targeted for Israel’s actions.… Read more »
Hamas reportedly claimed to have captured a dolphin equipped with Israeli spying equipment and an arrow shooter. (Wikimedia Commons)
(JTA) — Forget the Iron Dome defense system and the rest of Israel’s formidable military – Hamas is worried about Israeli spy-dolphins. The Palestinian daily Al-Quds reported this week that Hamas captured a dolphin outfitted with Israeli “spying equipment.” Hamas’ naval wing reportedly tracked down the dolphin, which gave itself away through… Read more »
TEL AVIV (JTA) – Back in the summer of 1965, the first West German ambassador to Israel, Dr. Rolf Pauls, an ex-Wehrmacht officer, memorably kissed the hand of then-Foreign Minister Golda Meir. It was part of the early stages of official diplomatic relations for Germany and Israel — even… Read more »
Maria Pellegrini, who owns the winery with her husband, grew up in a winemaking family in southern Italy. But because she isn't Jewish, she can't take part in the winemaking in her own winery. (Ben Sales)
CASTELNUOVO BERARDENGA, Italy (JTA) — Up a windy road in the tranquil Tuscan hills, down a gravel path and past acres of grapevines, a visitor will come across a stainless steel door frame secured with a piece of clear packing tape. The Hebrew scrawled on the adhesive reads: “David Solomon.”… Read more »
(Kveller via JTA) — I’m standing on a cliff 50 feet above the Pacific Ocean, balanced on a precipice between two worlds. I don’t know how life has brought me to this place, this beautiful rock on the Izu Peninsula in Japan, but I’m here with my Japanese husband… Read more »
Diners at a Jewish restaurant in the Ghetto district of Rome, July 20, 2013. JTA's Ben Sales found a thriving Jewish community in the Italian capital. (Giorgio Cosulich/Getty Images)
(JTA) — During my four months studying in Italy in the fall of 2007, you could say I had more than my fair share of strange Jewish experiences. Running late for a train one morning in Florence, I decided the best course of action would be to lay tefillin… Read more »
PHILADELPHIA (JTA) – Visiting Israel the past few winters to see his daughter and her family led to an unexpected job for Jerry Narron, a devout Christian and a baseball lifer: a coaching position for Israel’s team in the next World Baseball Classic. In 2013, Callie Mitchell had just… Read more »
Senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh arriving at a Liberation Youths summer camp organized by the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip, Aug. 1, 2015. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
TEL AVIV (JTA) — After more than a decade of failed diplomacy, Israel could be close to signing a major agreement with the Palestinians. They’re just not the Palestinians you thought. After years of vowing not to negotiate with Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, Israel may be finalizing… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The dredging up of the dual loyalty charge — that lawmakers who reject the Iran nuclear agreement and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is lobbying against it, are more closely aligned with Israel than the United States — illustrates just how tense the debate over the… Read more »
The entrance to the main boardwalk of the Deauville beach, July 24, 2015. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
DEAUVILLE, France (JTA) – This seaside community situated 125 miles west of Paris boasts windswept beaches, turquoise-water marinas, a grand casino, a race track and an Olympic-size swimming pool. Deauville, spanning 2.2 square miles, also has five kosher restaurants, three main synagogues and more than 20 smaller Jewish congregations.… Read more »
(Jewniverse via JTA) — Jews from Denmark first arrived on the white beaches of what is now St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands — a tiny speck off the coast of Puerto Rico — in the mid-17th century. These were descendants of a Jewish population that had fled Spain for… Read more »
American soccer player Catie Chase at the European Maccabi Games in Berlin showing photos of her late grandparents, who survived the Holocaust, July 28, 2015. (Hillel Kuttler)
BERLIN (JTA) – Seventy-nine summers after Marty Glickman’s Olympics uniform was rendered as useless as a jilted bride’s wedding dress, his daughter Nancy wore the same uniform to light the cauldron that officially opened the European Maccabi Games here. Her late father’s removal from the U.S. track team hours… Read more »
