Roast chicken is a Friday-night staple in Jewish homes. (Ronnie Fein)
There’s no rule that says Jews are required to eat chicken on Shabbat — that is, no rule was ever handed down from a rabbi or written in the Torah. But it is a long-standing practice for many Eastern European Jewish families to serve roast chicken on Friday night.… Read more »
Winston Churchill was so impressed by Uganda during his 1907 safari that he wrote a book about it titled “My African Journey.” Published in 1908, Churchill wrote of the then-British Protectorate: “For magnificence, for variety of form and color, for profusion of brilliant life — bird, insect, reptile, beast —… Read more »
A Jewish woman casts her vote at the Yusef Abad Synagogue during elections in Tehran, Feb. 26, 2016. (Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Several days after the Jewish Daily Forward published the first-ever report from the Islamic Republic of Iran by a reporter openly representing a Jewish, pro-Israel news outlet, the host of CNN’s foreign affairs show “GPS” posed a vexing question. Citing the Forward’s surprisingly favorable account of the… Read more »
Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi are interviewed by Israeli-American entertainment mogul Haim Saban at the Israeli-American Council conference in Hollywood, Fla., Dec. 2, 2018. (Israeli-American Council)
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (JTA) — Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate, his Israeli-born wife, Miriam, and Haim Saban, the Israeli-American entertainment mogul, entered the deck of the pool complex at the Diplomat Hotel here on Saturday night and chose a table to sit around and well, schmooze. Never mind the frantic security… Read more »
President George H.W. Bush speaking in 1993. (Jewish Chronicle/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – George H.W. Bush, the one-term president whose public grappling with Jewish leaders made headlines while his private interventions helped bring tens of thousands of Jews out of danger, has died. Bush, 94, died Friday at his home in Houston, his family said, less than a year after… Read more »
Lisa Silverstein Tzur (Courtesy of Tzur)
SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — This is a story of gratitude. So much gratitude. In 1983, my local rabbi handed me his guitar and taught me four chords. He said (paraphrasing the first century sage Hillel) “Lisa, with these four chords you can play any Jewish song. All the rest is commentary.… Read more »
Many Jewish legal authorities have called for universal vaccination in response to measles outbreaks in the United States and Israel, according to two doctors associated with the Touro College system. (Hannah Smith/KOMU/Flickr)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Opposition to vaccination on political and religious grounds has been swaying parents across the country to refuse immunizations for their children. Recently this has resulted in two of the largest measles outbreaks in New York’s history, impacting haredi Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods. The opposition to vaccines… Read more »
Yossi Blak, left, and fellow travelers from Israel visit Lublin's Hotel Ilan, Sept. 5, 2018. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
WARSAW, Poland (JTA) — Shopping was the last thing on Sarah Hirsch’s mind this summer when she boarded a flight from Tel Aviv to this capital city. It started out as a Holocaust pilgrimage. Hirsch, 67, flew to Warsaw in August with her husband, Naftali, and a friend to see… Read more »
Marianne Williamson at an event at The East Hampton Library on New York's Long Island, Aug. 13, 2016. (Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for East Hampton Library)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Had she received a better Jewish education, Marianne Williamson says, she might have become a rabbi. Instead, Williamson has become one of the country’s best-known New Age self-help gurus, reaching millions of people over more than three decades in the public eye. She counts Oprah and… Read more »
JScreen Offers Hanukkah Discount and Highlights Top 5 Reasons You Should Spit with Your Partner (Atlanta)—JScreen, a not-for-profit at home education and genetic carrier screening program, highlights the top 5 reasons couples should spit to ensure that they receive essential genetic information that can help them plan for… Read more »
Migrants climb up a bank of the nearly dry Tijuana River as they attempt to make their way past a police blockade to the El Chaparral port, Nov. 25, 2018. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is just one of 435 members of the incoming U.S. House of Representatives, but her youth, surprise primary win in her Bronx-area district, socialism and, above all, outspokenness have attracted outsize attention. So when Ocasio-Cortez, 29, likened the crisis at the U.S. border with… Read more »
(JTA) — Israel’s official Jewish religious authority has published a list of rabbis it trusts to perform Jewish conversions. They are all Orthodox. Advocates for religious reform in Israel said the publication of the list of 69 rabbinical courts was a mixed bag: While they are happy to see… Read more »
Tova Hartman (Courtesy of Hartman) KIRYAT ONO, Israel (JTA) — Last year, at the diverse campuses of Ono Academic College, some of my students expressed concern and even dismay over the Christmas tree we had set up next to the Hanukkah menorah. The students were understandably wary of what such Christian symbols have meant to… Read more »
(Israel Hayom via JNS) In what was the first ever address by a Czech leader to Israel’s legislative body, President Miloš Zeman sent a message of “solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people” to the Knesset on Monday. Among those in attendance at the historic speech were Israeli President… Read more »
Liana Finck attends an event at the Milk Gallery in New York City, Feb. 22, 2018. (Sean Zanni/Getty Images for Moleskine)
NEW YORK (JTA) — Liana Finck is in the eating area of a grocery store in Southampton, New York, and I’ve interrupted her beach excursion. Once a week, the Brooklyn-based illustrator rides a train to the east end of Long Island to channel her creative energy. She wakes up… Read more »
Teresa Shook attends The 2017 Common Good Forum at University Club in New York City, May 12, 2017. (Donald Bowers/Getty Images for The Common Good)
(JTA) — Teresa Shook says she likes to work “behind the scenes.” But this week, the woman who co-founded the Women’s March thrust herself front and center by calling its leadership to step down. Shook, a grandmother from the remote Hawaiian town of Hana, posted the Facebook event that… Read more »
Amir, Gahl, Sha’ron and Neev Eden on Dec. 19, 2017, the last night of Hanukkah Amir Eden)
Many years ago, after serving in the Israel Defense Forces, I moved to live on a kibbutz in the beautiful Israel Valley. My father, who lived as a teen in the 1950s in Hulata, a kibbutz in the shadow of the Golan Heights, inspired me (a city boy) to… Read more »
Linda Sarsour speaks at BET’s Social Awards at the Tyler Perry Studio in Atlanta, Feb. 11, 2018. (Marcus Ingram/Getty Images for BET)
(JTA) — Linda Sarsour released a statement apologizing on behalf of the Women’s March for causing harm to the movement’s Jewish members and for being too slow to show its commitment to fighting anti-Semitism. “We should have been faster and clearer in helping people understand our values and our… Read more »
