Category: World News

(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 […]

(JTA) — For decades, Jewish players have been increasingly rare in English professional soccer. Since 1992, only one British-born Jew has appeared in the Premier League, the country’s top tier and arguably the best soccer league in the world. But this year, an Israeli has been turning heads with his play in the league, to […]

(JTA) — Berlin police are investigating a pro-Palestinian rally where demonstrators allegedly chanted “Death to the Jews” and “Death to Israel,” phrases that if verified could be criminal offenses under Germany’s strict post-World War II hate speech laws. Hundreds of people showed up in the Kreuzberg and Neukölln neighborhoods on Saturday at a rally organized […]

(JTA) — When Israel and Poland agreed to resume Israeli youth trips to Polish Holocaust sites last month, their agreement stipulated that new sites be added to the students’ itineraries, including some that document Nazi crimes against non-Jewish Poles. Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and history authority, is now calling those additions “inappropriate” and “problematic.” […]

BERLIN — It was hard to overlook the symbolism: the city that once was the epicenter of Nazi Germany hosting a massive celebration by Jews with roots in the Communist Soviet Union, which for decades tried to stamp out any hint of Jewish practice or identity. Over three days, some 750 Jews with ties to […]

PARIS (JTA) — The courtroom was crowded but the defendant’s seat was empty on Monday as a landmark trial in French Jewish history got underway, nearly 43 years after the synagogue bombing that Hassan Diab stands accused of orchestrating. An arrest warrant in the 1980 bombing that killed four people and wounded 46 was first […]

KYIV, Ukraine (JTA) — Yuliia Krainiakova fled her home in Kharkiv, Ukraine, after Russian troops invaded last year and made her way to Berlin, where she and her daughters settled for 10 months with the help of Jewish organizations. After returning to Kharkiv several months ago, she hoped to experience some of the Jewish gatherings […]

(JTA) — After Russian President Vladimir Putin reunited with his Jewish high school teacher on an official visit to Israel in 2005, he bought the elderly widow an apartment in Tel Aviv. That’s according to a widely circulated story based on an interview that the former teacher, Mina Yuditskaya-Berliner, gave to an Israeli news outlet in 2014. At […]

(JTA) — A former principal at an Australian school for Orthodox girls has been convicted on 18 counts of abusing students, including a charge of rape, in a case that strained relations between Australia and Israel. The conviction came more than two years after Malka Leifer was extradited from Israel, where she had fled in […]