Category: World News

(JTA) — Germany held a ceremony to celebrate the first German-Jewish sites to be given UNESCO’s World Heritage designation on Wednesday. The sites in the upper part of the Rhine River valley are known as the origin point of Ashkenazi culture and where the Yiddish language first began to develop over 1,000 years ago. They […]

This winter, the city of Odessa, Ukraine, feels like the heart of darkness. The city is constant bombardment by the Russian military, freezing nighttime temperatures commonly fall below zero, and electricity is only available for six hours per day: three in the morning and three at night. Amid these desperate circumstances, Avraham Wolff, the chief […]

(JTA) — Russian missile fire damaged a 113-year-old synagogue in the city of Huliaipole, Ukraine, last weekend. An unconfirmed photo of the synagogue on Twitter shows a massive hole in the building’s exterior; the state of the interior is unclear. 🤬💥Оккупационные войска ударили по синагоге в Гуляйполе Это здание постройки 1909 года регулярно страдает от […]

(JTA) — A British Labour Party lawmaker apologized hours after calling Israel’s new far-right government “fascist” in parliament on Wednesday in a show of how the party is prioritizing a unified pro-Israel stance after years of antisemitism controversy. “Since the election of the fascist Israeli government in December last year, there has been an increase […]

(JTA) — Stephen Sizer, a retired British vicar who once claimed Jews and Israel were behind 9/11, was banned from the Anglican ministry for 12 years on Monday. Over the course of more than two decades as priest and academic in southern England, Sizer made a name for himself as an outspoken opponent of Christian […]

(JTA) — The French government updated its plan for fighting antisemitism and racism, which will require teachers to receive training on the topic and all French schoolchildren to visit the site of an antisemitic or racist incident. Those visits could include Holocaust sites, and roving exhibitions about antisemitism and racism will also be set up […]

BERLIN (JTA) — For second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, the final hours of a five-day working trip to Poland and Germany brought everything into focus. It was here in the underground information center in Germany’s central Holocaust memorial that Emhoff sat down with several survivors, including two who had recently fled war-torn Ukraine. Sitting in a […]

BERLIN (JTA) — A federal German cultural organization has returned a 16th-century sculpture to the heirs of its pre-war Jewish owner who faced Nazi persecution. The Berlin-based Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, or SPK (for Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz), announced today that the “Maria Lactans” statuette depicting Mary nursing an infant Jesus would be given back to […]

(JTA) — A Muslim man put off a protest that would have involved burning a Torah scroll in front of Stockholm’s Israeli embassy this past weekend. The man, identified in reports only as a 34-year-old Egyptian writer living in Sweden, had reportedly received approval from Swedish authorities for the protest, which would have come in […]

(JTA) — Just before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Milan’s Holocaust memorial debuted an eye-grabbing new addition on some of its exterior walls: murals of characters from “The Simpsons” dressed as Jews under Nazi rule. But the Shoah Memorial Foundation said the well-known Italian pop artist who painted the murals didn’t reach out before creating the series […]