Justice Gabriel Bach, the prosecutor in the trial of Adolf Eichmann, in front of the Vossius Gymnasium in amsterdam. (Cnaan Liphshiz) AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Gabriel Bach knew he was Jewish and that the Nazis were a serious threat, but at 13, leaving his new school and home in Amsterdam proved heartwrenching. What if, the boy wondered, he could stay just a few more weeks to finish the academic year? Bach… Read more »
Rabbi Alona Lisitsa, a Reform rabbi, participated in a religious council in Mevasseret Zion, a town west of Jerusalem, May 2012. (Rabbi Alona Lisitsa Facebook Page) Non-Orthodox movements continue making inroads in Israel By Mati Wagner JERUSALEM (JTA) — After a Jerusalem-area’s religious council allowed a female Reform rabbi to participate in its proceedings, some advocates of liberal Judaism in the country are hailing their inroads into the Orthodox-dominated religious infrastructure. At the beginning of May,… Read more »
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Unlike other Jewish holidays, the Torah does not specify a date for Shavuot; it is celebrated on the 50th day (seven weeks) after Passover. We moderns celebrate Shavuot on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan; in ancient times, when the first day of… Read more »
Daniel Levine, fourth-generation owner of Manhattan's J. Levine Books and Judaica, says that while online booksellers such as Amazon hurt his business a decade ago, now he's been able to use the Web to boost his sales. (Alexandra Halpern) NEW YORK (JTA) — The books are in the back at J. Levine Books and Judaica. Before finding the volumes of Jewish titles at the midtown Manhattan store, customers encounter a rotating display of mezuzahs on the left, followed by shelves of kiddush cups and a rack featuring a Hebrew-language… Read more »
Some 40,000 haredi Orthodox men filled Citi Field in New York to rally against the dangers of the Internet, May 20, 2012. (Ben Sales) NEW YORK (JTA) — The sellout crowd that filled Citi Field on Sunday night wore black and white, not the New York Mets’ blue and orange. And instead of jeering the Philadelphia Phillies or Atlanta Braves, they faced a foe that was, to hear them talk about it, far… Read more »
(Cleveland Jewish News) — The Cleveland deli scene might see a new patron when Mitchell Schwartz arrives in town on Thursday, May 10, for the Cleveland Browns’ rookie minicamp. The team selected him with the 37th overall pick in last week’s NFL Draft. “Matzah ball soup or a nice… Read more »
(Forward) — An upcoming haredi Orthodox mega-rally in New York about the dangers posed by the Internet has a promotional Twitter account. The event’s box office has an email address. Speeches will be live streamed. And one of the event’s organizers owns a Web marketing company specializing in search… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — Observing my kids playing, I notice how the same toy, no matter how many times they play with it, can reveal the most remarkable things. My daughter, with the vocabulary befitting a 1 1/2-year-old, will bring her ball over to me and point to a… Read more »
Pilgrims enjoying the Hiloula celebration at the El Ghriba Synagogue in Tunisia, May 2012. DJERBA, Tunisia (JTA) — Two thousand years ago, a mysterious woman who was unable to talk arrived on this island. Every sick person she touched was healed. Although she died when her wooden house caught fire, her body remained intact and did not burn. That’s a local legend. Another… Read more »
An anti-government demonstration in Budapest, December 2011. (Ruth Ellen Gruber) BUDAPEST (JTA) — The debate over anti-Semitism in Hungary has sharpened since the anti-Israel, anti-Jewish and anti-Roma (Gypsy) Jobbik movement entered Parliament two years ago as the country’s third largest party. Seeking scapegoats and channeling paranoia at a time of severe economic, social and political woes, Jobbik’s lawmakers regularly… Read more »
Rabbi Tamas Vero and his wife, Linda Ban Vero, outside Budapest's Frakel Leo street synagogue, where they head a growing congregation mainly made up of young families like themselves. (Ruth Ellen Gruber) BUDAPEST (JTA) — Linda Ban is a rebbetzin, but with a mass of curly hair and chunky rings on the fingers of both hands, she hardly fits the stereotype of a Central European rabbi’s wife. A mother of two in her mid-30s, Ban is married to Tamas Vero, the… Read more »
Pawel Bramson, left, at the Jewish cemetary in Warsaw. (Kuba Wyszynski) WARSAW (JTA) — Fifteen years ago, Pawel Bramson was a skinhead shouting anti-Semitic and racist slogans during soccer matches. He hated Jews and blacks – simply, he says, because you need someone to blame for what’s wrong in the world. These days he keeps kosher, wears the long beard… Read more »
ATLANTA, Ga. (JTA) — When I was 8, I had names picked out for all of my future offspring (a dozen baby girls). At 13, I had my own babysitting business. After grad school, I was teaching a class of fourth-graders. So by the time I became pregnant with… Read more »
Students at hte Ben Gamla Kendall charter school in Florida paint durning an artist's visit to the school. (Courtesy of Ben Gamla Kendall) BOSTON (JTA) — When the U.S. Supreme Court effectively legalized school vouchers in 2002, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs called it “a devastating blow to one of the foundations of our democracy”: the separation of church and state. Four years earlier, JCPA had conducted a yearlong study that… Read more »
Josh Breitzer, left, is invested as a cantor by Rabbi David Ellenson, president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. (Photo Courtesy HUC-JIR) (JTA) — What’s the difference between investiture and ordination? Plenty, say officials at the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, which has announced that for the first time since establishing its cantorial school in 1948, it will ordain rather than invest its graduating class of cantors. Six… Read more »
Arab and Israeli students holding hands at the Max Rayne Hand in Hand School for Bilingual Education in Jerusalem. (Kobi Gideon/Flash90/JTA) JERUSALEM (JTA) — The two seventh-grade girls walk together down the hall, their heads touching as they talk excitedly. Dana’s dark auburn hair is pulled back in a ponytail. Waard’s head is covered by a hijab, the traditional Arab headscarf, held with a fashionable pin. Dana is Jewish and… Read more »
The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost friends and relatives. BALTIMORE (JTA) — On Jan. 3, 1948, Mordechai Levy, a resident of the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City, disappeared. The 17-year-old’s parents, David and Yaffa, alerted British mandatory authorities and checked local hospitals, the chevra kadisha… Read more »
NEW YORK (JTA) — Lithuania’s 800-year-old connection to its Jewish population broke down in 1941, when the Nazis invaded the country and murdered nearly all of its 200,000 Jews – often with the complicity of local Lithuanians. This month, 70 years on, Lithuania finally passed historic compensation legislation to… Read more »
Young Jews entering the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Camp in Poland during the 2010 March of the Living. (March of Living International) NEW YORK (JTA) — Bernhard Storch grew up in a Jewish family in Silesia, near Poland’s border with Germany. Like many Polish Jews, he moved quickly from town to town as the Nazis advanced in 1939, trying to avoid capture. Before long he was caught and sent to a… Read more »
Eva Vavrecka contemplating the horrific living conditions that her mother and grandparents endured in the forest to survive World War II. (Bruce Konviser) TRSICE, Czech Republic (JTA) — Nearly 70 years after a Czech Jewish family sought refuge from the Nazis by retreating into a nearby forest and relying on non-Jewish locals for help, an American high school teacher has helped erect a permanent monument to their memory. Last week, several dozen… Read more »
