Category: World News

BERLIN (JTA) – Approximately 1,000 people — most of them Israelis living in Berlin — gathered Thursday at the iconic Brandenburg Gate here to show solidarity with protests against judicial reform in Israel. The protesters’ messages were intended for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in the German capital for meetings with German Chancellor […]

ISTANBUL (JTA) — Turkish Jewish leaders say they are taking action after students at Istanbul’s Üsküdar American Academy reportedly performed the Nazi salute during a soccer game against Istanbul’s sole Jewish day school. The students from the American Academy, considered one of Istanbul’s most elite, delivered the gesture at the game on Tuesday as a […]

(JTA) — After a century-old synagogue in Essen, Germany, was struck by two bullets last November, news reports connected it to the shooting at a synagogue in Halle three years earlier that had been perpetrated by a far-right German extremist. But authorities quickly connected the Essen shooting to a different kind of perpetrator: Ramin Yektaparast, […]

(JTA) — Bulgaria’s president was on hand on Friday for a ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the country’s dramatic decision to save its 48,000 Jews from the Nazis. So were representatives of the Bulgarian Orthodox church whose predecessors instigated the rescue, as well as a prominent Bulgarian-born Israeli historian and politician, Michael Bar Zohar, […]

ORANJESTAD, Aruba (JTA) — One of Alberto Zeilicovich’s first duties as a Conservative rabbi was to officiate the funeral of a 20-year-old congregant, murdered by a drug cartel while enjoying a night out with his friends at a disco. It was the late 1980s in Medellin, Colombia, and Zeilicovich had entered the pulpit at the […]

MIAMI (JTA) —  Hours before Israel and the Dominican Republic were to take the field as competitors in the World Baseball Classic, players and management gathered at a local park to promote friendship between the two countries and to raise awareness for the common fight against hatred and antisemitism. Hosted by the Israel Association of […]

(JTA) — The BBC announced Monday that it would return top sports broadcaster Gary Lineker to the air Saturday after the network briefly suspended the soccer host for a tweet comparing a British policy to Nazi Germany’s. Britain announced a new immigration package last week that includes an agreement with France on a new migrant […]

KYIV (JTA) — In a historic building in the most industrial part of Podil, the hipster district of Kyiv that once was the heart of the Jewish trading community, a senior and passionate Esther seduces a much younger Ahasuerus. She flirts with the handsome king to the raucous giggling of the audience, which breaks into […]

(JTA) — The film producer Daniel Dreifuss has only one surviving photo of a distant relative: his grandfather’s cousin, who fought for Germany in World War I and died in combat two days before the war’s end. He has a few more photos of his grandfather, who also wore the German uniform in WWI — […]

(JTA) — Starting tonight, many Jews around the world will celebrate Purim in the same ways: by reading the story of the heroic Queen Esther, dressing in festive costumes and drinking alcohol. For many of the 900 or so Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it will be the first of two annual Purim celebrations. Since […]