Six decades after the government of the United States recruited 1,000 former Nazis as spies, someone in the government still seems to want to hold on to the program’s secrets. When New York Times reporter Eric Lichtblau was digging through once-secret archives for his new book on the American government’s dealings with ex-Nazis, he found…
Muslims and Jews united in outrage as Israel blocked all access to the Al Aqsa compound — known to Jews as the Temple Mount — amid fears of unrest following the shooting of a prominent right-wing Israeli activist and the police killing of his suspected attacker. Muslims in Jerusalem’s Old City prayed on the streets…
(Haaretz) — Inspired by Taglit-Birthright’s free trips to Israel for college students, a brand new program will bring Jewish newlyweds from North America on heavily subsidized honeymoons to the Holy Land. The program, Honeymoon Israel, has just obtained initial funding to finance two pilot trips this spring, each of which will bring 20 couples on…
Ukraine’s parliamentary election delivered a stinging rebuttal to Russia’s claims that this year’s pro-Western revolution was galvanized by fascism and anti-Semitism. Far-right and nationalist parties, long singled out by Russia as prime evidence of the revolution’s extremist character, suffered a series of stunning setbacks. The nationalist Svoboda party, which two years ago won more than…
With the arrival of the Ebola virus on American shores, public conversation has shifted from fears of contagion to a focus on the ethics of quarantine and the rights of the contained. Quarantine is an ancient form of medical precaution, predating immunization by centuries. Its implementation, however, has never been strictly clinical. The question of…
There’s always some nostalgia baked into a Broadway musical, that old-fashioned and always-dying art form that reached its apex in middle of the 20th century. It’s there in the subject matter, too: Even the freshest “Guys and Dolls” puts you in vintage New York; “Gypsy” is ever in the late days of vaudeville; and even…
A prominent right-wing Israeli activist was shot three times and seriously wounded in a drive-by attack outside a controversial Jerusalem conference about the future of the Temple Mount, Haaretz reported. A gunman on a motorcycle opened fire on Yehuda Glick outside the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem late Wednesday night. It was not immediately…
Saul Cenudioglu remembers when his synagogue was full and when Muslims and Christians of this diverse Turkish city joined with Jews to celebrate marriages and births. “I’m afraid in 15 or 20 years, people in Antakya might be saying, ‘Did you know there used to be Jews in this city?’” Cenudioglu said. Antakya sits just…
The Seesaw is a new kind of advice column in which a broad range of columnists will address the real life issues faced by interfaith couples and families. Read the discussion and vote for what you think is the best response to this particular quandary. You can email your own questions, which will remain anonymous,…
Not too long ago I found myself in an argument — civilly conducted, I must say — with a friend of one of my daughters, a young man of emphatically liberal views who teaches sociology at a college in Israel. In the name of gender equality, he said, he was careful to address his classes…
“Jews in India?” people exclaim when the concept is mentioned. With fewer than 30 members of the community left there, it’s sometimes hard to recall that a place like Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, was once the site of a thriving Jewish community. Jael Silliman, a scholar and, at age 59, the youngest of this…
