World

Ukraine fiscal crisis leads to major setback for homegrown Jewish philanthropy

A heavily damaged hotel near the Donetsk airport in Ukraine, Feb. 26, 2015. The fighting between Ukraine and Russian-backed rebels has wreaked havoc on the Ukraine hryvnia.(Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
July 29, 2015 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

(JTA) – For many years Rami Waisman, the director of a major jewelry chain, was earning enough to give back handsomely to the Jewish communal institutions in his eastern Ukraine hometown,  Dnepropetrovsk. But these days Waisman is struggling and can no longer financially support such institutions as the local synagogue,… Read more »

European Maccabi Games to play at Olympic venues built by Nazis

Adolf Hitler, second from left, watching the Olympic Games in Berlin with the Italian crown prince, left, August 1936. (Fox Photos/Getty Images)
July 21, 2015 / Toby Axelrod, JTA

BERLIN (JTA) – They are roaring through Europe, raising dust as they go: Jewish bikers bearing an Olympic-style torch all the way from Israel to this German city. Next week, 11 core riders will pull their steel steeds into Berlin’s famous outdoor amphitheater, the Waldbuehne, to help usher in… Read more »

Amid their country’s financial crisis, Greek Jews struggle and brace for more turmoil

Greeks waiting in line outside a shuttered bank to withdraw their daily allowance of 60 euros. (Gavin Rabinowitz)
July 7, 2015 / Gavin Rabinowitz, JTA

ATHENS, Greece (JTA) — For 55 needy Jewish families, a cash welfare payment is the only thing that gets them through the month. But when they came to the Athens Jewish Community last week for their July assistance, they were given only a portion of the payment in cash… Read more »

When Nicholas Winton, the British rescuer of Jews, was rebuffed by the U.S.

Nicholas Winton at a London event honoring him in September 2009. (Peter Maciarmid/Getty Images)
July 5, 2015 / Rafael Medoff, JTA

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Last week’s passing of Nicholas Winton, the London stockbroker who rescued more than 600 Jewish children from the Nazis on the eve of World War II, has drawn attention to the phenomenon of ordinary individuals who risked their lives to save Jews from the Holocaust. Winton‘s… Read more »

In London’s Jewish heart, planned neo-Nazi rally provokes outrage

A view of a street in the Golders Green neighborhood of London, June 19, 2015. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
June 24, 2015 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

LONDON (JTA) — Like many European Jews, Stephen Lever has mostly stopped wearing his yarmulke on the street in recent years. A Londoner, Lever said he fears joining the hundreds of Jews accosted annually in his native United Kingdom, often by Muslim or Arab extremists seeking to exact retribution… Read more »

In Britain, Jewish and Muslim women connect over Mitzvah Day

Muslim and Jewish participants in a new interfaith initiative during its launch at the Jewish Museum in the London Borough of Camden, June 9, 2015. (Yakir Zur)
June 22, 2015 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

(JTA) — Good deeds can be contagious. Just ask Laura Marks, a British Jew who is widely credited with creating one of her community’s most widely celebrated new traditions: an annual Mitzvah Day, now in its 11th consecutive year, in which thousands of British Jews perform charity work in retirement homes,… Read more »

A Russian chief rabbi stands by his strongman, aka Putin

Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, right, attending a brit milah at a Moscow synagogue, on April 28, 2015. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
June 11, 2015 / Cnaan Liphshiz

MOSCOW (JTA) – Rabbi Berel Lazar’s mother was eager for grandchildren. So she gave her 25-year-old son an ultimatum: He could return to his beloved Jewish outreach work in Russia if — and only if — he got married. His yeshiva classmates jokingly said he was already wed, “to the idea of… Read more »

70 years on, Hitchcock Holocaust doc finds an audience

A still from "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey" showing children smiling through barbed wire as Allied troops approach, April 1945. (Imperial War Museum)
May 27, 2015 / Gabrielle Birkner, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) — “This was a woman,” the narrator explains, as the camera pans over a figure so emaciated and burnt that it’s barely recognizable as human. It’s one of the more arresting scenes in “German Concentration Camps Factual Survey,” a highly unusual Holocaust documentary shot and scripted 70 years ago,… Read more »

Amid Chinese influx, Brandeis considers its Jewish identity

Brandeis Asian Club: A project of the Brandeis Asian American Student Association aims to raise awareness about sterotyping at Brandeis. (Uriel Heilman)
May 11, 2015 / Uriel Heilman, JTA

WALTHAM, Mass. (JTA) – When Jeff Wang was applying to U.S. colleges more than two years ago from his home near Shanghai, Brandeis University was a top choice. Like many Chinese students now at Brandeis, he had discovered the university on Chinese Internet forums that touted the school’s academic rankings and its… Read more »

It’s complicated: Germany and Israel mark golden anniversary as friends

German Chancellor Angela Merkel received the Presidential Medal, Israel's highest honor, from then-President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem, Feb. 25, 2014. (Ilia Yeflimovich/Getty Images)
May 8, 2015 / Toby Axelrod, JTA

BERLIN (JTA) — This month marks 50 years since Israel and West Germany established diplomatic ties. It has been an understandably complex relationship, launched two decades after the Holocaust ended and 14 years after West Germany committed to reparations “both moral and material” for the genocide committed by the… Read more »

Where is the Jewish aid to Nepal going?

Israeli soldiers establish a field hospital together with the Nepalese army on April 29 in Nepal. (IDF Spokesperson/ Flash90)
May 6, 2015 / Uriel Heilman, JTA

NEW YORK (JTA) – Almost as soon as news of Nepal’s devastating earthquake reached the wider world, Jewish aid groups began mobilizing humanitarian efforts to help the victims. In Israel, that meant dispatching first responders to Nepal; in America, it mostly meant raising and allocating money. How is the… Read more »

After Nepal quake, Israelis helping survivors

A quake emergency team member walks through debris from one of the UNESCO World Heritage site temples in Basantapur Durbar Square on April 28, 2015 in Kathmandu, Nepal. (Omar Havana/Getty Images)
April 30, 2015 / Ben Sales, JTA

When the ground began to shake, Inbar Irron was among a dozen Israelis in Nepal who ran outside the building where they had been sitting — and straight into a cloud of dust. When their vision cleared, they saw a devastating scene: Much of the village of Manegau, where… Read more »

At Bergen-Belsen memorial, warnings and worry on Holocaust remembrance

German President Joachim Gauck, right, participating in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on the 70th anniversary of its liberation, April 26, 2015. (Alexander Koerner/Getty Images)
April 29, 2015 / Toby Axelrod, JTA

LOHHEIDE, Germany (JTA) — At the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, hundreds of survivors, along with their children and grandchildren, stood together last weekend under gray skies on a ground alive with memories doing their part for the future. “I ask young people to please take the right decisions in… Read more »

In aftermath of Nepal quake, Israelis sending help and looking for their own

A statue of the Buddha surrounded by debris from a collapsed temple in Bhaktapur, Nepal, April 26, 2015. (Omar Havana/Getty Images)
April 27, 2015 / Ben Sales, JTA

TEL AVIV (JTA) — When the ground began to shake, Inbar Irron was among a dozen Israelis in Nepal who ran outside the building where they had been sitting — and straight into a cloud of dust. When their vision cleared, they saw a devastating scene: Much of the village of Manegau,… Read more »

Jewish Federation opens Nepal earthquake relief mailbox
April 27, 2015 /

Two days ago a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal. The latest numbers suggest over 4,000 people have been killed and thousands more injured. According to the United Nations, the death toll is likely to rise to the tens of thousands in Nepal, India and China. The Jewish Federations of North… Read more »

Will Russia’s missile deal with Iran end Israel’s silence on Ukraine?

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, being greeted by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, June 25, 2012. (Israel Government Press Office/ Kobi Gideon)
April 21, 2015 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

(JTA) — After Russia invaded Ukraine in March 2014, Israel resisted pressure to join the United States and its European allies in condemning the move — citing in particular its concern not to antagonize Russia for fear it could provide Syria with a powerful anti-aircraft missile called the S-300.… Read more »

More than 40 years later, Munich 11 will get Olympic moment of silence

American weightlifter David Berger was one of 11 members of the Israeli team killed by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. (Courtesy Barbara Berger)
April 16, 2015 / Sheila Wilensky, AJP Associate Editor

Security was lax entering and leaving the 1972 Olympic Village in Munich. Barbara Berger knows this firsthand, because she was there on Sept. 3, 1972 to watch her 28-year-old brother, David Berger, an American, lift weights as a member of the Israeli Olympic team. The next morning, Berger and… Read more »

Le Pen picks fight with father amid party’s surging Jewish support

National Front leader Marine Le Pen speaking with reporters following a meeting with French President Francois Hollande, Jan. 9, 2015. (Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images)
April 14, 2015 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

(JTA) — At 27, David Rachline is the youngest senator in the history of France’s Fifth Republic and a rising force within the country’s third largest party. A university dropout and the son of a Jewish Socialist Party activist, Rachline crushed his opponents in the 2014 mayoral elections in… Read more »

Some good news coming out of France’s Jewish community: top-ranked schools

Girls study in a Jewish school in Sarcelles, France, Oct. 3, 2010. (Serge Attal/FLASH90)
April 13, 2015 / Canaan Liphshiz, JTA

.(JTA) —When mainstream French media report about Jewish schools, it’s usually not good news. Sometimes, the reports are about controversies surrounding public funding of such institutions in a country with a strong separation between religion and state. More often, the news is in the context of security around Jewish schools,… Read more »

First in line for Portuguese citizenship: Jewish dreamers and fortune seekers

Congregants praying at the Kadoorie Synagogue in Porto, Portugal, May 2014. (Courtesy of the Jewish community of Porto)
April 10, 2015 / Cnaan Liphshiz, JTA

(JTA) — Hunched over a monument for thousands of Jews killed in a 1506 massacre in Lisbon, Danielle Karo (not her real name) felt a swelling in her eyes. To Karo, an American poet and business analyst who is descended from one of Sephardic Jewry’s greatest sages, the massacre… Read more »