Category: World News

When Yad Vashem was created in 1953 on the slopes of Jerusalem’s Mount of Remembrance to commemorate the Holocaust, its founders understood that one of the central functions of the institution would be to document the names of the 6 million Jewish victims. It was seen as a moral imperative: to demonstrate that behind the […]

(JTA) — Han Smith and Jennifer Andreacchi recently made international news for becoming the first queer couple to have a Jewish wedding in Scotland. But at the time they met, they had never been to Scotland, and they didn’t yet identify as queer — or Jewish. Smith, 26, grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, […]

(JTA) — For the last 80 years, the only way to see images of Jews rising up against their captors in the Warsaw Ghetto has been from the perspective of Germans, who took the only known photographs of the seminal event of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. But last month, a roll of film taken by […]

ISTANBUL (JTA) — Dozens of Orthodox Jews gathered on a hill overlooking the Bosphorus Strait.  Above them, guarding the hilltop, stood a Turkish military base, and below sat the swanky Istanbul neighborhood of Ortaköy. Dominating the view was the 15th of July Martyrs Bridge, which connects Europe and Asia. On the Asian side of the […]

(JTA) — Dominic Perrottet, the premier of the Australian state of New South Wales and a leading member of the country’s center-right Liberal Party, is facing harsh criticism after news surfaced that he wore a Nazi costume during his 21 birthday party, nearly 20 years ago. Perrottet apologized during a conference he called outside of […]

(JTA) — A significant portion of the weaponry that the United States has sent Ukraine for use in its defensive war against Russia has come from a stockpile in Israel, according to a new report in The New York Times. The location of the stockpile is significant because Israel has declined to supply Ukraine with […]

(JTA) — Heirs of a German-Jewish banker are suing a Japanese insurance company for the return of one of Vincent van Gogh’s famed “Sunflowers” paintings or at least $750 million in punitive damages. In December, Julius H. Schoeps, Britt-Marie Enhoerning and Florence Von Kesselstatt, heirs of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, filed a 98-page complaint with an […]

(JTA) — In a shocking development, the embattled founder of Germany’s non-Orthodox rabbinical schools has relinquished his ownership stake in them to the Jewish Community of Berlin. The 25,000 euro transaction means that Rabbi Walter Homolka is no longer in control of the Reform Abraham Geiger College and the Conservative Zacharias Frankel College at the […]

(JTA) — Andrew Bridgen, a member of British Parliament, has been booted from the Conservative Party after calling COVID-19 vaccination in the United Kingdom “the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust” in a tweet on Wednesday. Starting on Tuesday, Bridgen has already been serving a five-day suspension from parliament for a breach of lobbying […]

(JTA) — A prize established to honor a single inspiring Jew with a lifetime of achievements has been awarded this year to a nameless group whose work is ongoing: Jewish activists in war-ravaged Ukraine. The Genesis Prize Foundation said the war in Ukraine required a change in the approach it has taken since creating the […]