Category: World News

(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 […]

(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 […]

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 […]

(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 […]

(JR) — A new survey by a political think tank shows a major increase in right-wing extremist and antisemitic attitudes in Germany. The study published on Thursday indicates that 8% of people in Germany have a right-wing extremist worldview, up from 2-3% in previous years. It was commissioned by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which is […]

MONTREAL (JR) — A leading Canadian lawmaker apologized, and then resigned from his leadership role, after inviting a former Nazi soldier to attend Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Parliament last week. Speaker of the House of Commons Anthony Rota said he had not known that 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka had volunteered with the Waffen SS […]

(JR) — Legend has it that in the early 14th century, the grand duke of Lithuania set out on a hunting trip. One night, he dreamt of an enormous iron wolf, which a priest would later tell him was a sign that he should establish a city on the site where he had slept. Whether […]

(JR) — The way things stand now, Mexico is headed to elect its first woman president next year. The two leading candidates in the polls for the 2024 election are Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico City’s former mayor, and Xóchitl Gálvez, a senator representing the center-right opposition bloc. The polls point to another first: Sheinbaum, currently the […]

(JR) — Germany has banned a neo-Nazi group after raiding the homes of its leaders across the country, in a move the government said “sends a clear signal against racism and antisemitism.” The Hammerskins, a local spinoff of a group founded in the United States in the late 1980s, are accused of promoting criminal activities […]

(JR) — A long-awaited final report has arrived in the investigation of a leading German Reform rabbi and his partner after allegations of abuse of power and sexual harassment against them erupted last year. Clocking in at 806 pages, the report by a prominent German law firm concludes that Rabbi Walter Homolka “was responsible for […]