Cnaan Liphshiz
By Cnaan Liphshiz
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Culture Meet the Yiddish-Speaking Grandmothers Who Retired as Amsterdam Prostitutes
Like many Jewish grandmothers, Martine and Louise Fokkens enjoy talking about their grandchildren in language laced with Yiddish. At 71, the twins from Amsterdam also paint, think often about the Holocaust and attend synagogue on Jewish holidays. But the Fokkens are not like most Jewish grandmothers. For one thing, they recently retired after 50 years…
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Fast Forward Sukkah Sparks Controversy in Mostly Muslim Dutch Neighborhood
(JTA) — For the tour guides that lead visitors through the Van Ostade Housing Project, Fabrice Schomberg’s sukkah is one of the few signs of the neighborhood’s Jewish roots. Built in the 19th century for impoverished Jews, the enclave today is surrounded by the largely Muslim neighborhood of Schilderswijk, an area that the Dutch media…
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News Sparkling $100M Jewish Community Center Towers Over East Ukraine City
(JTA) — Five months into the war that turned him into a refugee in his own country, Jacob Virin has already attended 20 Jewish weddings — including those of his son and two other relatives — at the $100 million JCC of Dnepropetrovsk. Towering over the skyline of this industrial metropolis, the 22-story Menorah Center…
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Fast Forward French Jews Move Toward National Front as Right Pushes Fight on ‘Islamization’
From the window of his Paris home, Michel Ciardi can see into the waiting room of a government welfare agency where a predominantly Arab and African crowd awaits government checks. A former communist, Ciardi once believed the scene at the agency was a necessary element of French efforts to help integrate new immigrants. But that…
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Fast Forward Polish Jews Split Over Exhuming Nazi Massacre Victims
(JTA) — In September 1941, a group of villagers wielding axes and other tools descended upon the homes of their Jewish neighbors and murdered every last one, according to testimonies gathered by Holocaust scholars. Not much else is known about the massacre in Wasosz, a village 100 miles east of Warsaw, including basics like the number…
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News For Jews Displaced By Fighting in Ukraine, Israel Is The Promised Land
(JTA) — Each time he dispatches a car into Lugansk, Rabbi Shalom Gopin readies himself for hours of anxious anticipation. The scene of brutal urban warfare between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian separatists, this eastern Ukrainian city now has no regular power supply, running water or cell phone reception. Mortar rounds can fall without warning. Much of…
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Opinion France’s Acceptable Anti-Semitism
Getty Images (JTA) — My friend Alain Azria gave me a puzzled look when I told him, with some indignation and disbelief in my voice, that I had just heard talk of killing Jews at an unauthorized anti-Israel demonstration in Paris. I had heard one young black man with a Parisian accent telling a dozen…
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News Flamboyant First as Jewish Boat Floats in Amsterdam Gay Pride Canal Fest
(JTA) — Its passengers included celebrities, a rabbi and revelers in biblically themed costumes, but the Jewish boat at Amsterdam’s gay pride parade stood out for more than just its riders. Following a west-to-east course along the Dutch capital’s Prinsengracht canal on Saturday along with dozens of similarly flamboyant vessels, the Jewish boat was the only…
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Fast Forward Mamdani tells Colbert — and a national audience — why NYC Jews shouldn’t fear him as mayor
In Case You Missed It
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Yiddish World Popular Yiddish learning tool now offering small grants
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Yiddish „דאָס לעבן רופֿט“ — אַ ליד פֿון מאָראַלישער קלאָרקייט פֿאַר אונדזערע צײַטן‘Life Calls’ — a Yiddish poem of moral clarity for our times
חנה סאַפֿראַנס בוך פּאָעזיע איז אַרויס בעת דער וויעטנאַם־מלחמה און איינס פֿון די לידער הייסט טאַקע „אַ מאַמע אין וויעטנאַם“.
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Fast Forward Exclusive: Mamdani pledged to arrest Netanyahu. A poll shows how New Yorkers really feel about that
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Culture She revolutionized the world for LGBTQ Jews, and now she’s ready for a new challenge
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