MADRID (JTA) — When one puerta closes, another puerta opens — or at least that’s how Tel Aviv may be feeling, after Madrid offered to replace Barcelona as its Spanish twin city. Barcelona’s mayor, Ada Colau, cut ties with Tel Aviv on Wednesday, citing what she said was “apartheid” in Israel. On Thursday, Madrid’s mayor, […]
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(JTA) — The fate of Saul Cenudioglu, the president of the small Jewish community in Antakya, remains unknown, while his wife Fortuna was confirmed dead Thursday morning after an Israeli search team pulled her body from the wreckage of their apartment building. The two were believed to have been buried when their building collapsed in […]
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MADRID (JTA) — Archaeologists working in a town in southwestern Spain have excavated a 14th-century Sephardic synagogue, revealing a fully intact floor plan including a women’s section and ritual baths. The synagogue complex in Utrera, in the province of Seville, is believed to be among the largest ever found on the Iberian Peninsula from the […]
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BERLIN (JTA) — Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff made headlines late last month during a trip to Europe, where he met with other foreign leaders working to combat antisemitism and returned to his ancestors’ town in Poland. But the trip was originally Deborah Lipstadt’s mission. The historian, an authority on Holocaust issues and now the U.S. […]
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(JTA) — Songwriter Burt Bacharach, who with his longtime lyricist Hal David turned out a string of hits in the 1960s and ’70s — including “Alfie” and “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” — died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 94. Bacharach and David, both Jewish New Yorkers, also wrote […]
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WASHINGTON (JTA) –– During the 35 years Eli Rosenbaum spent hunting Nazis, he always looked up to his forebears in the profession. But it was only recently, as he ventured into Ukraine to track down Russian war criminals, that he felt a personal connection with the investigators who pursued Adolf Hitler’s henchmen in the years […]
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(JTA) — French authorities have placed under judicial supervision a man who allegedly made threatening phone calls last month to a Jewish school in Toulouse that was the site of a deadly terror attack in 2012. The 34-year-old suspect made 163 phone calls in total, reports show, including some to a hospital and to a […]
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(New York Jewish Week) — A new book untangles one of the best known incidents involving Jews in the American Civil War — and suggests the real version is both more complicated and more interesting than the legend. In “Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army,” historian Adam D. Mendelsohn recalls the story […]
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(JTA) — As their numbers dwindle, Bosnia’s Jewish community is creating an archive of Balkan Jewish history, including documents, photographs, artifacts and genealogies to preserve the Bosnian Jewish story. The Jewish Community of Bosnia Herzegovina group acquired a 7,500 square foot space in downtown Sarajevo in the fall, with the hopes of turning the eventual […]
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This is a developing story. ISTANBUL (JTA) — Israel is sending aid to Turkey and Syria in the wake of a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that has left over 2,000 dead as of Monday evening here. Israel will send medication, tents and other supplies to Syria, its neighbor that it considers a hostile state, according to […]
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