(New York Jewish Week) — If you have never heard of an “etroger,” a Yiddish term for a Jewish merchant who sold citrons to Jewish communities in central and northern Europe during the Middle Ages and beyond, you are not alone. Josh Teplitsky, an associate professor of Jewish history at the University of Pennsylvania, was not […]
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(JR) — Unexpected events converged not only to forge Matt Turner’s career as a professional soccer player. They enabled him to find Jewish roots he never knew he had. Turner, 29, the starting goalkeeper for the U.S. men’s national team and Nottingham Forest in England’s Premier League, discovered those roots in finding his paternal great-grandmother’s […]
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(JR) — More than 80 years after one of Germany’s most prominent synagogues was destroyed on Kristallnacht, the Jewish community of Hamburg has taken ownership of the building’s site and is set to begin rebuilding it. The site of the Bornplatz Synagogue, a neo-Romanesque building dedicated in 1906 that had a 1,200-seat sanctuary and was […]
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(JR) — Earlier this year, the local Jewish community of Brest, Belarus received a call from a young couple who had just purchased a fixer-upper house and needed some help with a difficult situation: Their basement was built from old Jewish gravestones. For nearly two decades, the Jewish community — and in recent years, the […]
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((JR)) — Leaning into his latest controversies, Elon Musk is planning to join a bevy of Jewish men for a live chat on Thursday. The conversation will focus on “X, anti-Semitism, and the future of free speech,” according to conservative pundit and social media personality Ben Shapiro, who announced Wednesday that Musk would join him […]
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TAIPEI, Taiwan (JR) — Rebecca Kanthor, a member of a progressive Jewish community in Shanghai, knows that she can easily order lulavs and etrogs in a few clicks online. Kanthor, who belongs to Kehilat Shanghai, simply logs onto Taobao, China’s equivalent to Amazon. Etrogs, important components of a ritual for the Sukkot holiday, are known […]
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(New York Jewish Week) — A multi-generational group of people congregate on a building stoop on Hester Street; an African-American man leans on a lamppost; a gaggle of teenagers pile on top of each other at the beach in Coney Island; a hoard of children — in various states of undress — play with a […]
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((JR)) – The Biden Administration’s new point person for combating book bans at school districts and public libraries across the country is a gay, Jewish progressive activist who has served as a government liaison to the Jewish and LGBTQ communities. The appointment of Matt Nosanchuk comes as the thousands of book challenges nationwide have focused […]
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(New York Jewish Week) — For many generations of New Yorkers, eating a Nathan’s Famous hot dog from their Coney Island flagship location is a staple of summer. The iconic hot dog stand just celebrated its 107th season at the city’s iconic beachside destination. Nathan’s Famous — which started as a nickel hot dog stand […]
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(JR) — The organizers of the Golden Globes expelled an Egyptian member of its voting body over the weekend following the discovery of old tweets in which she seemed to espouse conspiracy theories about Israel and Zionists. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association did not say why it had expelled the film critic Howaida Hamdy along […]
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