Tagged HEADLINES

Istanbul — While Turkey and Israel have seen their once-close relationship deteriorate steadily for the past few years, the Israeli commando raid of a Turkish-led flotilla heading for Gaza, in which several Turks were killed, marks a dangerous new low in the two countries’ relations. “Turkey is now involved… Read more »

Washington — President Obama’s Cairo speech and its equivalent invocations of Palestinian and Jewish sufferings. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s call for an unequivocal freeze: “Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions.” The Joe Biden fiasco. And now the Obama administration’s venture into a nuclear-free Middle… Read more »

Singer/songwriter Sam Glaser will be in Tucson to celebrate a local friend, his own father, and fathers everywhere this Father’s Day. The acclaimed Jewish pop musician will perform at a fundraiser suggested by his friend Michael Deitch on Sunday, June 20 at 1 p.m. at Congregation Anshei Israel. Deitch,… Read more »

Veit Harlan, left, directs actor Werner Krauss as Rabbi Loew in "Jew Suess," a Nazi-era propaganda film. (Zeiteist Films)

LOS ANGELES (JTA) — German director Veit Harlan may have made 29 other films between 1935 and 1962, but his 1940 anti-Semitic classic “Jew Suess” guaranteed his position as the favorite director of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Even to this day the film casts its baleful shadow over his… Read more »

SONOMA, Calif. (JTA) — When I was a kid, the prospect of catching polio was terrifying. We could not dive into a public swimming pool for fear we would spend the rest of our lives in an iron lung. Two Jewish doctors vanquished that disease and removed such fears… Read more »

MOSCOW (JTA) — It took them five days and nights in four hotels through three countries to deliver two vans from London to the Jews of Latvia and Lithuania. Eight British volunteers went on a “Mission Impossible,” a program of the British charity World Jewish Relief, to aid Jewish… Read more »

NEW YORK (Tablet) — Inna Grade, the widow of the Yiddish writer Chaim Grade and a feared enemy of many within in the Yiddish literary world, died May 2. Her age was a matter of some uncertainty, but the rabbi who officiated at her funeral believes that she was… Read more »

MOSCOW (JTA) – After decades of community-building from the top down, often with the aid of donors from overseas, can Russia’s Jewish communities build themselves from the bottom up? That’s the question that a group of, well, donors from overseas are trying to determine with a new educational program… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO (j. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California) — You have 73 new e-mails. Someone just posted on your wall. You have been tagged in a photo. You turn on your cell phone: “4 missed calls” … “2 new voice mails” … and a long string of… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Peter Beinart attends an Orthodox synagogue, once edited The New Republic (the closest thing to a smicha for Jewish policy wonks) and backed Sen. Joe Lieberman’s quixotic 2004 bid to become the first Jewish president. Which is why he’s always been counted among the Washington pundits… Read more »

WADI FUKIN, West Bank (JTA) — Mohammed Mansara, a 70-year-old farmer who goes by the name Abu Mazen, indicates with a sweep of his arm the fruit trees and vegetables he grows on his small plot of land in this Palestinian village in the West Bank, population 1,200. Then… Read more »

In an age when no self-respecting American would be caught without a dietary restriction, from low-fat and high-protein to vegan or gluten-free, Jews have the proud distinction of being the first group to claim an Official Food Fixation. Since biblical times, the Jewish relationship to food has been more… Read more »

Jerusalem On the day last week that Israel gained admission to the prestigious Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Israel’s continued control over the Palestinians was eroding its global standing. Whereas Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu… Read more »

Far be it from me to defend Pat Buchanan, but I don’t think critics of his attack on the Elena Kagan nomination understand what makes it so objectionable. The fast version of Buchanan’s Kagan column (available at WorldNet Daily) is this: By failing to nominate WASPs, or white ethnics… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — A middle-aged Russian tourist dressed in white and claiming to be Jesus checked in last week at the Petra Hostel in Jerusalem’s Old City.       He did not stay long, the hostel’s clerk said. Just a few days and he was gone.       The man likely… Read more »

Passage of SB1070, the state law that requires local police to enforce federal immigration law, has prompted boycotts of Arizona because of possibilities for racial profiling and civil rights violations. The law has not yet gone into effect, but its reach is already being felt at the University of… Read more »

    NEW YORK (JTA) – The U.S. Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements are warning that a proposed Israeli conversion bill is “disastrous to the unity of the Jewish people.”   Knesset members from the Yisrael Beiteinu party were in the United States this week trying to marshal support for a… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Observers of Jewish education for teens are increasingly concerned about a disparity between the participation of boys and girls. Lamenting the absence of boys in youth programs, Jewish educators and philanthropists have turned their attention more and more to enticing boys to become involved.  I… Read more »

 WASHINGTON (JTA) — A top adviser to President Obama said talks on Jerusalem should be left for last. “The president agrees that Jerusalem as an issue can’t be the first issue for negotiations,” David Axelrod, Obama’s top political adviser, told a small group of journalists working for Jewish media.… Read more »

 PETIT-GOAVE, Haiti (JTA) — Not a single Jew lives among the 170,000 inhabitants of Petit-Goâve, nor among the 20,000 refugees from Port-au-Prince who have crowded into this town since a magnitude-7.0 earthquake leveled Haiti’s capital in January.  But Jews are among those helping bring Petit-Goâve back to life.  “After… Read more »