“My name is Mustafa, and I am from Gaza,” declared the 16-year-old perched, however improbably, on a picnic table near the shore of Pleasant Lake, Maine. His backdrop — just days after sheltering from the Israeli mortars exploding near his home — was New England’s White Mountains. “I lived 20 days in third war. I…
Once upon a time there was a prince and a princess of Jewish music. They were loved and adored by their fans. But although they sang and spoke about healing and unity, something was missing from their lives. Their marriages had failed. All hope was lost. Then they found each other. A great deal has…
(JTA) — Boxing Club Prishtina is a squat building on a narrow street around the corner from the parliament in the heart of Kosovo’s capital city. Around the corner, a popular Italian restaurant draws the young Western Europeans and Americans in button-down shirts and open-toed heels who help keep the country running. Walk the other way…
I had never harbored any ambitions of becoming an international smuggler until one cloud-free summer evening in 1991. I grew up in Sweden, became religious in my teens and immigrated to Israel in 1978. I was living in Ra’anana and working as an engineer at Motorola Israel when Jakob, a new immigrant from Sweden, came…
A Jew arrives at Israel’s Haifa port, trying to smuggle two bags of coffee. “What do you have in the bag?” the customs officers ask him. “Bird feed,” he replies. “Since when do birds eat coffee?” “They’ll eat it if they want; if they don’t, they won’t.” Jewish bootlegging has not only provided material for…
The Seesaw is a new kind of advice column in which a a broad range of columnists will address the real life issues faced by interfaith couples and families. Join the discussion by commenting on this post, sharing it on Facebook or following the Forward on Twitter. And keep the questions coming. You can email…
Israel will stop exporting poultry and dairy from settlements to the European Union, Israeli and European officials announced. Effective Sept. 1, Israeli poultry and dairy exports to the EU will be restricted to products from within the Green Line, Israel’s pre-1967 borders, the French news agency AFP reported. An Israeli official involved in discussions with…
“There are two kinds of Jews in the world. “There is the kind of Jew who detests war and violence, who believes that fighting is not ‘the Jewish way,’ who willingly accepts that Jews have their own and higher standards of behavior. And not just that we have them, but that those standards are our…
It’s been a strange summer for 15-year-old Tariq Abu Khdeir. In the space of just a few weeks, the Palestinian-American boy visited east Jerusalem, where tensions were about to boil over. He also grappled with the murder of a cousin who was burned alive by Israeli extremists; got detained and was savagely beaten by Israeli…
When a parent of young children dies in ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn, local activists take up a collection. They post fliers on the street, featuring heartrending images of the orphans; host events in living rooms and local banquet halls, and try to cobble together a nest egg to keep the family fed and marriageable. Or at least…
You all know those children’s puzzles in which you have to look at a picture and identify the details that are wrong. Those of you who can read some Hebrew might try this one from the August 7 New York Times. On its op-ed page is a cartoon essay by the Israeli-born, Brooklyn-based illustrator Koren…
אין פֿאַרגלײַך מיט די פֿיזישע פּאַוויליאָנען געשאַפֿן פֿון אָפֿיציעלע לענדער איז דער ייִדישלאַנד־פּאַוויליאָן געבויט אויף אידעען
