Tagged Soviet Jewry

NEW YORK (JTA) — From graphic novel Haggadahs to a Donald Trump-themed one, if you’re looking for a certain kind of guide to the Passover seder, chances are it’s out there. Recent years have seen a proliferation of political, environmental, family-friendly,  or just plain irreverent Haggadahs, but the urge to… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — As the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination approaches, we Jews have our own special reasons to mourn. The conventional community memory of Kennedy would be enough by itself. JFK overcame the legacy of his father, President Franklin Roosevelt’s notoriously appeasement-minded ambassador to Britain on… Read more »

Sen. Frank Lautenberg attending a Holocaust memorial ceremony in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, May 1, 2008. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — In 1982, Frank Lautenberg was running for New Jersey’s U.S. Senate spot at a time when  Democrats in the state were down on their political fortunes. The Jewish community knew and liked Lautenberg, a data processing magnate who died Monday at 89 after serving more than… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Twenty-five years ago, I joined hundreds of thousands of my fellow Americans — Jews and others — on the National Mall to draw attention to the plight of Soviet Jews. We were united by a simple belief that the Soviet Union, by denying its Jewish… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Exactly 25 years ago on Dec. 6, more than 250,000 people gathered in Washington to call on the Kremlin to open the gates and let Soviet Jews emigrate. Freedom Sunday, as it came to be known, was the largest Jewish-organized gathering in American history. The… Read more »

(JTA) — The greatest Jewish success story in a quarter century has become unknown to many in less than a generation. On Dec. 6, 1987, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in Washington, more than a quarter-million American Jews — Democrats and Republicans, observant and secular, and individuals representing… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — On a fall day in 1963, Abraham Joshua Heschel unburdened his soul. Speaking the truth without regard for whether it scandalized or hurt was something he would do fairly often in that decade of social upheaval. Already branded as an eccentric and an outsider, that… Read more »