A Polish director with Jewish heritage made a movie about the migrant crisis. The government compared it to Nazi propaganda.

(JR) — Poland’s justice minister is embroiled in a feud with one of the country’s best-known filmmakers after comparing her award-winning new movie about Europe’s migrant crisis to Nazi propaganda. The director, Agnieszka Holland, is the daughter of a Catholic mother and Jewish father, both of whom were part of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Her […]

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In a first, Volodymyr Zelensky met with Chabad rabbis ahead of Rosh Hashanah

(JR) — Volodymyr Zelensky met with 32 Chabad emissaries and rabbis Thursday night ahead of Rosh Hashanah, marking the Jewish president of Ukraine’s first official meeting with Jewish leaders since Russia invaded in February 2022. Also in attendance were 15 Jewish soldiers whom Zelensky presented with medals. During the meeting, Zelensky made his latest appeal […]

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New synagogue in Dresden plans to operate outside of Germany’s Jewish mainstream

(JR) — A new synagogue billing itself as a neo-Hasidic congregation has opened in the former East German city of Dresden, without the backing of Germany’s main Jewish communal umbrella organization. The Jewish Community Dresden, or JKD, was founded two years ago by Akiva Weingarten, who received his first ordination in the Satmar Hasidic sect in […]

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Why is the Ukraine war more Jewish than the Iranian uprising? A year after Mahsa Amini’s death, that should change.

(JR) — I regularly post Middle Eastern Jewish feminist content on social media, so right when Mahsa Amini was murdered, TikTok’s algorithm flooded my account with videos of women from Iran, giving a play-by-play account of events. Amini was a 22-year-old woman from Kurdistan, visiting her relatives in Tehran. Despite the fact that she was […]

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Tens of thousands of Jews flock to Uman for Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage despite another year of wartime warnings

(JR) — The U.S., Israeli and Ukrainian governments have all called it an extremely dangerous voyage into the heart of an ongoing war. But despite the warnings, tens of thousands of Jewish men and boys are expected to travel to Uman, Ukraine, for an annual Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage that pays tribute to the influential Hasidic […]

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Unetaneh Tokef, the High Holidays’ roll call of ruin, is heartbreakingly real for the Ukrainian Jews I’ve gotten to know

(JR) — A catalog of calamities is central to the liturgy of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Jewish High Holidays that begin later this week. We Jews are asked to imagine ourselves perched on the precipice of life and death. Nothing frames it as starkly as Unetaneh Tokef, the roll call of ruin enumerating various […]

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Member of Goyim Defense League extradited to Netherlands after allegedly projecting antisemitic message onto Anne Frank House

(JR) – A prominent member of an American neo-Nazi group has been extradited to the Netherlands, where he will stand trial for projecting an antisemitic message onto the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Robert Wilson is accused of being behind a February incident in which a message was laser-projected onto the house where Anne Frank […]

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