On Friday, a man found himself inside the mouth of a whale. No, it wasn’t an ancient Hebrew prophet fleeing a God-given quest to the Assyrian city of Nineveh. This time it was a Cape Cod fisherman, Michael Packard, 56, diving for lobster off the coast of Provincetown, Massachusetts. To secure their catch, lobster divers…
(JTA) — A swastika was found scrawled on the ark at a synagogue at the Frankfurt International Airport in Germany Friday, according to the German publication Bild. It is unclear when the swastika was drawn, as the airport synagogue has been closed for several months due to the pandemic. A German organization of Orthodox rabbis condemned…
Noah’s Ark is in hot water: the biblical version’s 21st century replica was detained by British maritime authorities who deemed it unseaworthy to be towed from Ipswich, England back to the Netherlands. Aad Peters, a Ditch television and theater producer, is the current owner of the ark – a floating museum of Bible exhibits. The…
(JTA) — The thought of leaving his native Hungary to study Judaism in Berlin “seemed totally crazy” to Zsolt Balla when he first considered it. “I mean, Germany of all places?” he said. But a decade in the country that engineered the destruction of European Jewry has changed him. Balla became one of the first…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — When the veteran Jewish leaders logged onto a call to hear from the secretary of state about his trip to Israel, many were surprised by the guest list. While many of the groups typically present on such calls were represented, so was an official from the Holocaust museum here. What, they thought,…
(JTA) — A spokesperson for the city of Krakow, Poland, condemned as antisemitic the figurines of Orthodox Jews that are on sale as good luck charms there. “This figurine is anti-Semitic and it’s time for us to realize it,” Robert Piaskowski, the city’s alderman for cultural affairs, was quoted as saying during a meeting Thursday…
In March 2020, Tzali Reicher set out to track every Jew who died of the coronavirus. Now, his list has grown to include more than 1,800 names, a staggering number that still only accounts for a fraction of the total number of Jewish deaths. Reicher, who is 24 and lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, was…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — An array of Jewish groups has called on President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants. In a letter sent Wednesday addressed to Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the groups said such a pathway…
(JTA) — When Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster began visiting the tomato fields of Florida as an activist more than a decade ago, the stories of farmworkers being treated as slaves were still fresh. The Justice Department had discovered systemic abuse in the industry including cases of pistol whippings, confinement, starvation wages and rampant sexual assault. But…
Israel has become the first nation in the world to ban the import and sale of animal furs, thanks to a bill signed into law in the Knesset on Wednesday, after it was first passed in the fall of 2020 Its one major loophole allows fur to be used for religious purposes, and so it…
WASHINGTON (JTA)– Eleven of the 25 Jewish Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives said the grouping of the United States and Israel with the Taliban and Hamas in remarks about pursuing war crimes prosecutions gives “cover to terrorist groups” and called on their caucus colleague, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., to clarify her earlier statements….
100% of profits support our journalism
