The First Baptist Church is on a dead-end street in Spring Valley, N.Y., hard up against the railroad line that peters out a few blocks north. Adam Baldachin, a 30-year-old Conservative rabbi, stood at a podium under a fluorescent light in the church basement, backed by two-dozen religious leaders including black pastors in collars and…
“Getting out of Jerusalem isn’t tough,” said Tiviet Nguyen, the Vietnamese Israeli who sat behind me on the crowded bus full of Palestinian men. “The challenge is getting back in. But there’s a whole industry of taxis taking Israelis back from the West Bank. We’ll be fine.” Like me, Nguyen and her husband, Moshe Saraf,…
(JTA) — When a 2009 Holocaust-era assets conference concluded with a landmark statement of principles on Holocaust restitution, many restitution advocates had high hopes that a corner had been turned in the struggle for survivor justice. The Terezin Declaration, which had the support of 46 countries participating in the conference in the Czech Republic, outlined…
Three years ago, Alvin Wong received a call from The New York Times. After asking him a few questions about his demographic background, the excited reporter on the line gave Wong a piece of news that would upend his life: He was the happiest man in America. His first response was utter disbelief. “Who would…
If you’re the kind of person who has a theme for your Passover Seder, and if your theme this year is Marc Chagall, then you might have hired Bella Meyer for your table’s flower display. That’s because Meyer, the proprietor of Fleurs Bella, in Manhattan’s East Village, is Chagall’s granddaughter. One weekday afternoon shortly before…
(Reuters) — A Ukrainian rabbi whose congregation was the target of an anti-Semitic leaflet that drew global media interest and condemnation from the U.S. government believes it was a hoax and wants to put the matter to rest. But five days after the incident in the restive eastern city of Donetsk, Ukraine’s prime minister, anxious…
On Tuesday, the first day of Pesach, the Jewish world lost a true hero. Yuli Kosharovsky was best known for his work as an active leader of the Jewish refusenik movement. For years he fought for the freedom of Soviet Jews, and worked to enhance the lives of refuseniks, making a major contribution to Jewish…
(JTA) — The youthful group of 60 drew their chairs around tables strewn with jars of markers and the occasional Rubik’s Cube, nearby chalkboards at the ready for jotting down big ideas. The conference hall was suffused with a can-do vibe that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in Silicon Valley. But high-tech was not…
Alan Gross did not warn his family he was launching a hunger strike, but hearing the news, they understood why: The U.S. government subcontractor languishing in a Cuban prison feels forgotten. Gross, a 64-year-old Jewish father of two from Potomac, Md., is currently serving a 15-year sentence in Cuba for “crimes against the state.” He…
For months, Russia has wielded charges of anti-Semitism to undermine and discredit Ukraine’s pro-Western interim government. Now it’s the Kremlin’s turn to feel the heat. Masked men in Donetsk, which is controlled by pro-Russian separatists, distributed fliers this week ordering Jews over the age of 16 to register with the new authorities (for a $50…
South Dakota State University’s Hillel affiliate, B’rith Sholom is more than the only Jewish cultural club in the entire state; its nine members constitute a unique diversity among America’s Jewish organizations, since about half of them identify as Messianic Jews, or those who engage in Jewish practices and accept Jesus as the Messiah. Messianic Jews…
