Category: World News

(JTA) — A new association of egalitarian Jewish congregations has launched in Germany, in the latest consequence of a scandal that has been unfolding within German Judaism for nearly a year. The Jewish-Liberal Egalitarian Union, or JLEV according to its German acronym, marks a split with the existing body representing liberal Judaism in Germany, the Union of […]

PARIS (JTA) — Over 42 years after a bomb killed four and injured dozens outside the Rue Copernic synagogue, a court here has convicted a Lebanese-Canadian academic of the crime and given him a life sentence. Hassan Diab, now a Canadian citizen, was convicted in absentia on Friday after more than a decade of start […]

(JTA) — For the third of their three weddings, Hallie Applebaum and Elan Raffel set up a chuppah in Oaxaca, the Mexican city where they first confessed their love for each other. Oaxaca is a vibrant hub of Mexican folk art and incredible food, but Jewish life? Not so much. Nonetheless the couple chose there […]

WARSAW (JTA) — Exactly 80 years ago, a few hundred ragtag, half-starved Jews emerged from sewers in Warsaw to battle Nazis – and held them off for nearly a month rather than surrender themselves and their Jewish brethren to the Treblinka and Majdanek death camps.  On Wednesday, thousands of Poles and international visitors, including Polish […]

(JTA) — The U.S. Senate Budget Committee has accused Credit Suisse of impeding an investigation into former accounts at the bank that were held by Nazis, including many who fled to South American countries after World War II. On Tuesday, the committee released two reports, one by an independent ombudsman the bank had hired to […]

(JTA) – A Russian-Jewish dissident whose case has attracted support from human rights groups and prominent Jewish activists was sentenced to 25 years in prison for treason on Monday. Vladimir Kara-Murza, 41, received the harshest sentence given to a critic of the Kremlin in the 14 months since Russia first invaded Ukraine. The charges were […]

CHISINAU, Moldova (JTA) — Perched on a sofa somewhere in Israel, fugitive Moldovan-Jewish businessman-turned-politician Ilan Shor is seen in a video from last month speaking to his supporters back home. His message is, by his standards, relatively mild. “Maia, you really are Hitler,” he says, addressing Moldova’s pro-European president, Maia Sandu. “Whether you like it […]

(JTA) — The Great Synagogue of Barcelona was hit with anti-Israel graffiti ahead of Yom Hashoah, or Israel’s Holocaust remembrance day. The graffiti found on Monday read: “Free Palestine from the river to the sea. Solidarity with the Palestinian people.” Vandals also left letters nearby that said Israel commits “genocide against the Palestinian people” and […]

(JTA) — In a major development for British Jewry, the United Kingdom’s Liberal and Reform Jewish movements are joining to create a unified Progressive Judaism movement after working separately for more than 120 years. The historic project, a culmination of decades of discussions and rapprochement, is to be led by the Reform movement’s newly-appointed CEO, […]

It’s Switzerland in 1945 and the war has just ended. A group of deeply traumatized, ragged-looking Jewish teenagers recently liberated from Buchenwald have been sent to live in a former Swiss school building. A young Swiss woman named Klara cares for them, while her new husband, Johann, runs her family’s textile business, whose success is […]