Category: World News

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 […]

(New York Jewish Week) — The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research welcomed Lithuania’s president to its Manhattan headquarters Monday to honor the Jews who rescued rare books and documents from the Vilna Ghetto and the non-Jewish Lithuanian librarian who protected the same material from destruction by the Soviets. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda was the guest […]

(JR) — A United Nations committee designated a group of medieval Jewish buildings in Erfurt, Germany, as a World Heritage Site on Sunday. UNESCO, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, also gave the World Heritage designation to a ruins site near the West Bank city of Jericho, angering Israeli officials by describing its location […]