Chana Staiman visiting the building in Prague where her late father, Harry, was raised. (Courtesy Chana Staiman) The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost relatives and friends. BALTIMORE (JTA) – As a girl in Seattle, Anne Bush evinced little interest in the Holocaust, even though her father, Harry, was a survivor whose mother, sister and brother-in-law had been murdered. But as a mother in… Read more »
Until 2009, right-wing Portuguese politician José Ribeiro e Castro didn’t have much interest in the expulsion of his country’s Jewish community in the 16th century. That changed once Ribeiro e Castro opened a Facebook account. Online, the 60-year-old lawmaker and journalist connected to several Sephardic Jews, descendants of a… Read more »
Left to right, Juice co-organizers Inna Yampolskaya and Igor Kozlovskiy, Ukrainian Chief Rabbi Yaakov Bleich and the American Joint Distribution Committee's Lilya Vendrova at a Juice event in Kiev, November 2012. (Courtesy Juice) KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) — Hours after assailants shot Rabbi Artur Ovadia Isakov on a street in the Russian republic of Dagestan last month, mainstream Russian media were still scrambling to ascertain his identity. But Isakov’s name and condition already were known to the readers of Jewishnet.ru, a growing social… Read more »
Reflecting its new motto, "Protect the Refugee," HIAS is helping refugees in Chad. (Courtesy HIAS) TARRYTOWN, N.Y. (JTA) — The new HIAS is not your grandmother’s Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and it’s certainly not the one that brought her mother over from the Pale of Settlement. After decades as the Jewish community’s foremost voice on immigration — first in leading the resettlement of Jews… Read more »
Jewish participants of an interfaith conference in Sarajevo saying the Kaddish over the graves of 1985 Srebrenica massacre victims, July 2013. (Courtesy CMJ) SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (JTA) — Sarajevo is a city with a rich multicultural past, but it also bears the scars of war. Take a short walk through the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina and you will see the many cemeteries and bullet-riddled walls, which are undergoing restoration. These lay side by side… Read more »
Hoogvliet was among four Dutch supermarket chains that distanced themselves from a boycott on Israeli settlements goods they were said to be enacting. (Creative Commons) THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA) — Two weeks ago, the Dutch public learned of what appeared to be an unprecedented victory for European advocates of boycotting Israeli products. Four major supermarket chains reportedly declared a boycott of products from the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. But the… Read more »
Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich, left, and Rabbi Menachem Margolin of the Chabad-affiliated Rabbinical Centre of Europe have been at odds publicly over Schudrich's handling of the kosher slaughter case in Poland. (Creative Commons/Facebook) (JTA) — A few weeks before Poland’s parliament voted last month on whether to overturn a ban on ritual slaughter, Rabbi Menachem Margolin was scheduled to meet the Polish president in an effort to find a solution to the problem. The ban had been imposed in January, when a Polish… Read more »
Kate, the duchess of Cambridge, rides in a carriage back to Buckingham Palace in London in June 2013, is in labor in a hospital wing of St. Mary's Hospital named for a wealthy Jewish man. ( Chris Jackson/Getty) NEW YORK (JTA) – When the news broke Monday that Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge and wife of Prince William, had gone into labor, it seemed that London could not have been more prepared. For weeks, reporters and photographers had been camped out in front of the maternity ward at… Read more »
In Kenya, the home of this young HIAS client, the immigrant aid society has taken in refugees from conflicts in neighboring countries, among others. (Courtesy HIAS) TARRYTOWN, N.Y. (JTA) — The new HIAS is not your grandmother’s Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, and it’s certainly not the one that brought her mother over from the Pale of Settlement. After decades as the Jewish community’s foremost voice on immigration — first in leading the resettlement of Jews… Read more »
Former Montreal Canadiens coach Jacques Demers embraces his one-time goalie Patrick Roy at Roy's 2008 retirement ceremony at the Bell Centre in Montreal. (Photo by Richard Wolowicz/Getty Images) JERUSALEM (JTA) — Of all the compelling stories of athletic achievement and challenges overcome that could be told by the 9,000 participants gathering in Israel for the 19th Maccabiah Games, it might be hard to find one to top Jacques Demers. He’s a coaching legend, having led the iconic… Read more »
Egyptian protesters hold an anti-Morsi poster in Tahrir Square in Cairo shortly before the military's ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, July 3, 2013. (Spencer Platt/Getty) TEL AVIV (JTA) – For the second time in less than three years, Egypt is erupting in chaos, with a popular protest movement leading to a swift change in the country’s leadership. For Israelis, the Egyptian military’s removal of Mohamed Morsi from the presidency last week is a cause… Read more »
BALTIMORE (JTA) — The first arrows Roxana and Rafael Gonzalez launch at the upcoming 19th Maccabiah Games will take flight from their fingertips, but also from Jeffrey Sudikoff’s imagination. Roxana, 25, and Rafael, 24, are part of the first Cuban delegation to participate in the Maccabiah, a quadrennial sports… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — The release of a highly anticipated ombudsman’s report about how the Claims Conference missed an opportunity in 2001 to detect a massive fraud scheme is raising serious questions about governance of the organization and pitting the organization’s chief executive against the chairman of its executive… Read more »
TORONTO (JTA) — The Canadian Jewish News will keep publishing in print, the paper’s board announced. The paper’s president, Donald Carr, announced June 14 that the board of directors “is happy to confirm that the print newspaper will continue.” In late April, Canadian Jewry’s flagship paper announced that it… Read more »
Andrew Pochter, the Jewish-American student of Chevy Chase, Md., who was stabbed to death during a protest in Egypt on June 28, 2013. (Facebook)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Andrew Pochter, the American student stabbed to death Friday during a protest in Egypt, was active in Hillel and motivated by a desire to encourage peace and democracy in the region. “He went to Egypt because he cared profoundly about the Middle East, and he… Read more »
Israeli ZAKA emergency rescue team evacuating bodies from the scene of the terrorist attack in Burgas, Bulgaria, July 19, 2012. (Dano Monkotovic/FLASH90)
BRUSSELS (JTA) — Bulgaria claims it has previously undisclosed evidence that further implicates Hezbollah in a deadly terrorist attack last year on Bulgarian soil, JTA has learned. A Bulgarian representative to the European Union said Wednesday that investigators have discovered that a Hezbollah operative was the owner of a… Read more »
Marc Fichel at his tall at the Rungis wholesale market in Paris, May 29, 2013. (Cnaan Liphshiz) Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:””; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:”Calibri”,”sans-serif”; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} PARIS (JTA) — Using two iPhones, Marc Fischel was overseeing… Read more »
North Korea refugee and human rights activist Shin Dong-hyuk demonstrating for human rights in North Korea outside the White House, July 10, 2012. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
BRUSSELS (JTA) — When guards dragged Shin Dong-hyuk from his North Korean cell in 1995, he was pretty sure the end was near. Dong-hyuk, then just 13, was born in the prison known as Camp 14, not far from Pyongyang. Camp 14 is part of a network of political… Read more »
HIAS-assisted refugees in Chad (HIAS) (New York, NY – June 20, 2013) – HIAS, the global Jewish nonprofit that protects refugees, today launched The Welcome Initiative, a campaign to raise awareness around issues surrounding the treatment and welcome of refugees. Central to the campaign is the Affirmation of Welcome, a call to action to… Read more »
Protester standing on top of a barricade during a demonstration near Taksim Square in Istanbul, Turkey, June 11, 2013. (Lam Yik Fei/Getty) TEL AVIV (JTA) – As the budding protest movement in Turkey against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan struggles to gain a foothold, Israel is watching the developments with some measure of ambivalence. On the one hand, Erdogan has led Turkey away from a close alliance with Israel, using his… Read more »
