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 »
ATHENS, Greece (JTA) — Jewish leaders in Greece expressed concern and disappointment after the fascist Golden Dawn party was poised to enter the Greek parliament for the first time. With most of the ballots counted, Golden Dawn received nearly 7 percent of the vote in Sunday’s elections as Greeks… Read more »
(JTA) — Imagine if the NAACP responded with skepticism to the passage of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and urged African Americans to exercise their civil rights cautiously under this law. Title VI was landmark legislation when it was passed in 1964 to remedy racial and ethnic… Read more »
Supporters of Nicolas Sarkozy awaiting his arrival at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, April 15, 2012. (Philippe Agnifili via CC) PARIS (JTA) — Jewish voters couldn’t put incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy over the top in the first round of presidential elections in France. The Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande eked out a 1.4 percent victory on Sunday over Sarkozy, the center-right president, although Jewish community leaders said Sarkozy was the… Read more »
Women raising flags during a demonstration in Paris to protest recent murders in Toulouse, March 20,2012. (Daniel Hoffman) PARIS (JTA) — With the first round of France’s presidential election less than four weeks away, the attacks that left four Jews and three French soldiers dead are reshaping the race — but for now it’s not clear exactly how. In the days leading up to the attacks, President… Read more »
Demonstrators in Moscow protest Vladimir Putin's re-election, including one carrying a sign reading "We are not an opposition, we are your employers!" with the word "fired" over a drawing of Putin's face, March 5, 2012. (Freedom House via CC) (JTA) — With Vladimir Putin’s re-election as president of Russia pretty much a foregone conclusion, the question facing Russia was never what would result from last weekend’s election but what would happen after the vote. Thousands of protesters turned out Monday in a Moscow saturated with police and soldiers… Read more »
Alan Dershowitz, right, speaking at the University of Pennsylvania in a bid to galvanize pro-Israel students there, Feb. 2, in light of the expected anti-Israel message expected at the BDS conference on the Penn campus. Political journalist Robert Traynham served as the moderator for the program. (Scott Weiner) (Jewish Exponent) — Did the National Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Conference at the University of Pennsylvania over the weekend backfire for organizers and illustrate the strength of the pro-Israel community on campus? Or did BDS speakers like Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah reveal how much pro-Israel students need to… Read more »
(Jewish Ideas Daily) — Some days, I think back 25 years to my high-school French course, where I first encountered the concept of the juste milieu — the happy medium — and the difficulty of achieving it. Why is it so elusive? Why do I often feel caught betwixt… Read more »
(Jewish Ideas Daily) — Some days, I think back 25 years to my high-school French course, where I first encountered the concept of the juste milieu — the happy medium — and the difficulty of achieving it. Why is it so elusive? Why do I often feel caught betwixt… Read more »
A swastika spray-painted on a window of Temple Beth Israel in Hackensack, N.J., Dec. 10, 2011. (ADL) NEW YORK (JTA) — As Jews in some northern New Jersey communities made their way to synagogue last Shabbat, the scene was slightly different from the typical day of rest. Extra police cars were on patrol near synagogues. At Bnei Yeshurun in Teaneck, a new buzzer system had been… Read more »
NEW YORK (N.Y. Jewish Week) — If you were to take a cultural tour of New York today, you’d think Sigmund Freud were as relevant to society now as Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs. Everywhere you’d turn, from Broadway to the movies, you’d find the father of psychoanalysis holding… Read more »
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta spoke at the 2011 Saban Forum in Washington on Dec. 2, 2011. (Brookings Institution) WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Obama administration is reaping a whirlwind of criticism in the wake of pointed remarks about Israel by several U.S. officials over three days. The U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, caused an uproar when he suggested on Dec. 1 that hostility among European Arabs and Muslims… Read more »
Silvio Berlusconi (left) toasts with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem in February 2010. (Photo: Miriam Alster/FLASH90/JTA) Crowds on the streets of Rome jeered and cheered when their long-serving, scandal-plagued prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, stepped down earlier this month. A choir even sang Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” in front of the presidential palace as he handed in his resignation. Italian Jews don’t expect Berlusconi’s ouster to have… Read more »
Jenni Wolfson performing in her one-woman show, "Rash." (Melbourne Sibblies) NEW YORK (JTA) — At the start of “Rash,” Jenni Wolfson appears onstage in a green peasant skirt and khaki top to the sound of cascading gunfire. Her long brown hair is unceremoniously pulled back with a black scrunchie. From a trunk she pulls out a flak jacket and puts it on.… Read more »
An Occupy Wall Street protestor who says his name is David Smith holds a sign in Zuccotti Park in New York that offers an overtly anti-Jewish message, Oct. 11. (neolibertariannet via YouTube) NEW YORK (JTA) — The most unloved man in Zuccotti Park, the epicenter of the Occupy Wall Street protests, isn’t a Wall Street banker but a fellow who wears a baseball cap and carries signs denouncing “Jewish bankers.” The man, who told Slate his name is David Smith, comes… Read more »
Sept. 11 photo montage NEW YORK (JTA) — Osama bin Laden is dead. A new skyscraper is rising at the site of the old World Trade Center. U.S. troops are withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan. Ten years later, the physical legacies of 9/11 attacks are fading into history. Yet the conspiracy theories about… Read more »
HURRICANE HERO: The New York Jewish Week remembers David Reichenberg, a 50-year-old father of four from Spring Valley, N.Y., who died after being electrocuted while saving a boy and his father from a powerline downed by Hurricane Irene. “He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t think about the risk. He just… Read more »
VIENNA, Austria (JTA) — The symbolism was unmistakable. Four thousand Jews stood just a few hundred yards away from the spot where a quarter-million Austrians cheered Adolf Hitler in March 1938 as he announced Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria. This time, however, the Jews had come to celebrate, as… Read more »
(JTA) — For decades after World War II, far-right political movements in Europe stirred up for Jews images of skinheads and Nazi storm troopers marching across the continent. But in recent years, as European xenophobia has focused on the exploding growth of Muslims on the continent, right-wing anti-Semitism has… Read more »
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Did Yale’s program on anti-Semitism die a natural death from lack of academic vigor, as the university says? Should it have been saved, as two major Jewish groups are arguing? Or was it killed for being politically incorrect about Muslim anti-Semitism, as alleged by others? The… Read more »
