Jesse Orine -

Montreal passes Palestinian solidarity motion after removing text on cutting ties with Israel

August 25, 2026August 25, 2026Jesse Orine

Montreal has passed a motion of solidarity with Palestinians after stripping a clause that called for severing institutional and diplomatic ties with Israel. Montreal’s city council late Monday adopted the measure, which also removed earlier references to Israeli “apartheid” and “genocide,” after a contentious debate about the role of local government in denouncing conflicts abroad. […]

Mah jongg was a Jewish grandmother thing. Now teens are getting in on the game.

August 25, 2026August 25, 2026Jesse Orine

This article was produced as part of (JR)’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives. For generations of Jewish Americans, the clacking of mah jongg tiles was the soundtrack of a social and sometimes raucous table game associated with their mothers and […]

Dutch broadcaster pulls out of Eurovision over Israel’s participation

August 24, 2026August 24, 2026Jesse Orine

The Dutch public broadcaster Avrotros has pulled out of the next Eurovision Song Contest, saying that Israel’s participation undermined the event’s neutrality. Avrotros announced on Monday that it was withdrawing from the world’s largest music event next year because it “can no longer be considered neutral, with a participating country still involved in a large-scale […]

Argentina removes federal judge over antisemitic remarks in historic first

August 21, 2026August 21, 2026Jesse Orine

An Argentine federal judge was removed from office Tuesday for a series of antisemitic posts on his social media accounts that constituted misconduct incompatible with his role, an impeachment panel ruled. Alfredo Eugenio López, who headed Federal Court No. 4 in the coastal city of Mar del Plata, was removed by Argentina’s Jury of Impeachment, […]

Italy is having a Yiddish moment. An unprecedented I.J. Singer translation is part of the boom.

August 21, 2026August 21, 2026Jesse Orine

In September 1932, Israel Joshua Singer boarded a ship bound for New York, where he had been invited to report on the United States for Yiddish-speaking Jews like himself. “Americans are a difficult people to understand,” the famed novelist wrote in one of his first articles from the U.S. “They have tried at all costs […]

An influential book of a Nazi leader’s confessions is now available in English

August 18, 2026August 18, 2026Jesse Orine

Jürgen Stroop, the Nazi commander who led the killing of more than 50,000 Jews, was sitting in a cell in Warsaw awaiting his own execution. Before he met the gallows, Stroop described in unrepentant detail his ascent as a Nazi, his destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and his daily prosecution of mass murder. He gave […]

Forward editor out just months after starting

August 14, 2026August 14, 2026Jesse Orine

The Forward’s new editor-in-chief, Alyssa Katz, has left the publication after serving at its helm for less than nine months. As of Friday, her author page on the Forward’s website used the past tense to describe her role: “Alyssa Katz served as the editor-in-chief of the Forward.” Katz, who took on the role in January, […]

Iran appoints AMIA bombing suspect to National Security Council

August 11, 2026August 11, 2026Jesse Orine

For the second time this year, Iran has named a wanted suspect in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires to a top security role. A spokesman for the Islamic Republic’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said Monday that Mohsen Rezaei had resigned as an adviser to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba […]

How 3 Jewish refugees from the Nazis built Iceland’s classical music scene from scratch

August 10, 2026August 10, 2026Jesse Orine

REYKJAVIK, Iceland —This city in the autumn of 1935 was a small fishing port of corrugated-iron houses battered by high winds, cod trawlers idling in the harbor, and geothermal steam curling up from hot springs that would one day heat the whole city. Fewer than 30,000 people lived there. There was no concert hall, no […]

Montenegro’s tiny Jewish community navigates uncertain territory as hostility toward Israel increases

August 7, 2026August 7, 2026Jesse Orine

PODGORICA, Montenegro — At the entrance to Nikšić, Montenegro’s second-largest city, a vintage fighter jet painted in the colors of the Israeli Air Force perches atop a giant concrete pedestal, as if about to take flight. The monument, unveiled in 2024, commemorates “Operation Velvetta” — a top-secret plan that ferried 17 Supermarine Spitfire aircraft from […]