Vladimir Putin accused Jews of attacking the Russian Orthodox Church and suggested that they lacked family and “roots,” the latest antisemitic statement from the Russian leader since his 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Putin made the allegation during his lengthy annual press conference ahead of the New Year, which lasted four hours on Thursday. In the […]
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An Estonian university has cut ties with an Israeli university, setting off a chain of rebukes from the government, and pressure from its board. The rector of the Estonian Academy of Arts, or EKA, now says the decision to cut ties will be reviewed. The rector, Mart Kalm, also said critics of the decision had […]
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Assailants firebombed a synagogue in a Montreal suburb for the second time in just over a year, the latest in a series of attacks on Canadian Jewish institutions since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel. As in the other recent attacks on Canadian Jewish sites, no one was injured in the incident. Mordecai Zeitz, […]
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In April, when a group of pro-Palestinian activists pressured Florence’s city hall to have the local honorary Israeli consul resign, they also took aim at a politician, Sara Funaro, who was running for mayor. “We’re sorry that we haven’t heard one word of condemnation of the Israeli government’s behavior from Marco Carrai,” the honorary consul, […]
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(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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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A synagogue in suburban Melbourne, Australia, was set ablaze on Friday, causing congregants to flee and injuring at least one person. The fire before dawn on Friday at Adass Israel, a haredi Orthodox synagogue in the town of Ripponlea, sent congregants gathered for morning prayers into the streets at 4:10 a.m. Those who fled the […]
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(JR) — Jews in Australia experienced a record number of 2,062 antisemitic incidents over the year following Oct. 7, 2023, according to an umbrella group of Jewish organizations. A new report from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry found that the number quadrupled from the previous 12-month period, when it tracked 495 incidents. The group […]
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For half a millennium until the Holocaust, the cosmopolitan city of Thessaloniki, Greece, had a unique claim to fame: it was Europe’s only major city with a Jewish majority. But the golden age of Thessaloniki’s mostly Sephardic Ladino-speaking Jewish community came to a sudden end with the Nazi occupation of Greece in 1941 and turned […]
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