(JR) — The fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has opened up a sea of uncertainty about Syria’s future — and about the treasures of its past, including the remnants of its Jewish history. A 13-year civil war has cost the country more than 600,000 lives and saw some 100,000 people “forcibly disappeared” into prisons […]
Continue Reading
Three single Jewish men sat next to each other onstage. One nursed a mostly-empty beer and scratched his graying stubble while another readjusted his kippah. To their right, separated by a blue divider, the bachelorette — wearing hot pink pants and sorting through a stack of cue cards — sat on her own. Those in […]
Continue Reading
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. Spending a semester in Israel in 2023 was life-changing for Leora Schonbrun. At Tichon Ramah Yerushalayim, a high school program run by the Ramah organization, her feelings […]
Continue Reading
As 350 Jews with roots in the former Soviet Union gathered recently for a weekend conference at a Canadian Niagara Falls resort, Montreal was experiencing one of the worst outbreaks of antisemitic violence in Canada in this century. Hundreds of protesters smashed shop windows, attacked police officers, set fire to cars, and waved Hamas and […]
Continue Reading
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. “How does it feel to be on the wrong side of history?” These were the words flung at a student wearing a Star of David necklace by […]
Continue Reading
Writing a comprehensive history of Polish citizens during the Holocaust is a hefty task. A Polish law that criminalizes any mention of Polish responsibility for or complicity in Nazi crimes makes it even harder. That makes the groundbreaking research conducted by acclaimed Holocaust historian Jan Grabowski for his new book, “On Duty: The Polish Blue […]
Continue Reading
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. I’ve never been very good at math. Or science. During the pandemic, I was online for most of my seventh grade year at my public middle school […]
Continue Reading
Israeli-American filmmaker Nim Shapira was in his hometown of Tel Aviv celebrating Simchat Torah and his mother’s birthday on Oct. 7, 2023. That morning, he woke up to rockets, and watched the news in horror as the number of casualties and hostages rose. It was a harrowing, life-changing experience. But it was how the ensuing […]
Continue Reading
Yes, Hanukkah is “late” this year — in 2024, the holiday begins the evening of Wednesday, Dec. 25, and the last candle on the hanukkiah will be lit on the evening of Wednesday, Jan. 1. But for all the impatient party people among us, we have good news: This year’s festivities start long before Hanukkah […]
Continue Reading
To celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas, Max and Sophie, siblings in an interfaith family, bake up a batch of gingerbread dreidels. That’s the plot of a new children’s book out this year, but it could be a real-life occurrence this month, when the first night of Hanukkah falls on Christmas Day. Among the children’s books released […]
Continue Reading
