(JTA) — Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie was far from the first Republican lawmaker to compare public health measures aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 to the Holocaust when he posted an image of a tattooed wrist on Twitter on Wednesday. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert have also done so, along with several […]
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(JTA) — Iran’s new government includes two men who have been implicated in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people. On Wednesday, the parliament approved Ahmad Vahidi as interior minister and Mohsen Rezai as vice president of economic affairs among the 19 nominations by President Ebrahim Raisi. […]
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WASHINGTON (JTA) — In his first meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, President Joe Biden said that although he prefers diplomatic means to keep Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, he is not afraid to “turn to other options” on the issue. The pledge captured what both men, who are in varying degrees of […]
Continue ReadingRecently I spoke with David Renton, a British socialist and historian who is the author of the newly published book Labour’s Antisemitism Crisis: What the Left Got Wrong and How We Can Learn From It. We discussed the British Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, who was ousted last year following dismal election […]
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(JTA) — Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit seeking to recognize Jews who suffered under Vichy race laws in Morocco as Holocaust victims entitled to state compensation payments on Thursday, according to a report in Haaretz. A panel of three justices refused to hear the case, upholding a lower court’s ruling that the discrimination against […]
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(JTA) — The city of Potsdam, Germany, has its first new synagogue since the Holocaust — and it’s quite a looker. The synagogue is part of the newly inaugurated European Center for Jewish Learning at the University of Potsdam, which will also be the umbrella for the school’s School of Jewish Theology founded in 2013 […]
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(JTA) — It was a quiet Shabbat afternoon when the frustration that had been building up inside Michal Schick spilled out in a song. For months, Schick had been keeping a tally in her head — and sometimes on Twitter, where the New York City screenwriter is active — of pandemic-related Holocaust comparisons that, to her […]
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(JTA) – Following an international outcry, Amsterdam said its city-owned museum should return a Wassily Kandinsky painting that it had acquired from a Jewish family that was under duress during the Holocaust. Possession of “Painting with Houses,” which is believed to be worth at least $22 million, should be transferred from the city-owned Stedelijk Museum to […]
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(JTA) — Zebulon Simantov, Afghanistan’s last Jew, has not left Kabul, despite the best efforts of some Jewish figures and organizations. One of them was Moshe Margaretten, a haredi Orthodox fixer whose passion is bringing Jews out of danger. Margaretten paid Moti Kahana, an Israeli-American businessman who helped extract people from war-torn Syria, to be […]
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Because Rosh Hashanah (the 1st day of the month of Tishrei), Sukkot (15 Tishrei) and Shemini Atzeret (22 Tishrei) all start on the same day of the week, Jews often find that day quite busy during the fall holiday season. Some years, fall weekends are swamped with Jewish holidays. Other years, it’s three out of four Mondays. It turns out, though, that […]
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