JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
When your vocation is dealing with prejudice, hatred and antisemitism you don’t win many battles. Yet this past week, there were two moments that allowed for momentary rejoicing. Interestingly, both dealt with words and reminded us of the enduring power of speech. First, Joe Biden became the first American president to recognize the Armenian Genocide….
There’s a report that Adolf Hitler once asked, “Who, after all speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?” The veracity of that quote is unclear. But its popularity speaks to the uncertain place of the Armenian Genocide in the history of the 20th century’s ethnic cleansing movements — often sidelined, or conveniently forgotten about. History…
In Azerbaijan as in the United States, synagogues have been largely closed for months due to the coronavirus. Last week, however, one synagogue received special permission to open their doors — to pray for their country’s victory in its latest bloody conflict with Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. “We prayed that there will be…
(JTA) — Armenia’s capital named a street for Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish lawyer who coined the term genocide. The deputy mayor of Yerevan, Sergey Harutunyan, said during the ceremony earlier this month that Lemkin’s legacy had a “serious impact” on world history, the Armenrpess agency reported from the Dec. 11 ceremony. Lemkin was born in what…
Today is not only Yom HaShoah, but also Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. As I have previously discussed, the Armenian Genocide, a crime for which the term “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin, has gone unacknowledged by Turkey, which perpetrated the genocide, and also by countries such as Israel, the U.K., and the United States. In…
Imagine that you’re walking in Manhattan a few days before Holocaust Memorial Day and see five airplanes skywriting in massive letters that the Holocaust was a hoax. How would you feel? Imagine that you later find out that a full-page advertisement had run the same day in the Washington Post explaining that although some Jews…
BOSTON — The Ottoman government’s massacre of 1.5 million Armenians in the early 20th century was “unequivocally genocide,” the head of the Anti-Defamation League said in the group’s strongest position on the subject. Jonathan Greenblatt, the civil rights group’s CEO, also said in a blog post Friday that the ADL will support U.S. recognition of the…
The Jewish public policy umbrella called on the U.S. government to recognize the World War I-era Turkish massacres of Armenians as a genocide, a reversal of years of the Jewish community treading delicately around the issue. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs at its annual meeting last week called on Jewish community organizations to lobby…
כאָטש זי מישט אַ מאָל אַרײַן רוסישע ווערטער איז איר ייִדיש פֿאַרבליבן אַ פֿליסיקע און מע קען בולט הערן איר „טאָטע־מאָמע לשון“
ריטשאַרד ראַבינאָװיץ באַשרײַבט קונציק זײַן משפּחהס דערפֿאַרונגען אינעם ראַם פֿון דער אַמעריקאַנער ייִדישער געשיכטע.