(JTA) — An Israeli immigrant from Belarus who later converted to Islam was convicted for trying to join the Islamic State. Valentin Vladimir Mazalevsky, 40, a married father of five who lives in the Arab-Israeli town of Shibli in northern Israel, was arrested in February for trying to join the jihadists. He was convicted on…
(JTA) — The hometown in Belarus of the late artist Marc Chagall saw its first opening of a synagogue in over a century. The Jewish community of Vitebsk, which is located 155 miles northeast of the Belarusian capital of Minsk, last month celebrated the inauguration of the new synagogue. Vitebsk’s rabbi, Malkiel Gorgodze, affixed a…
MINSK, Belarus (JTA) — At the age of 36, Yishai Malkin and his family are leading what millions of people in the former Soviet Union would consider a charmed life. A web designer, Malkin and his wife, an event manager, earn a combined monthly salary of $2,000. That’s comfortable enough to allow them to travel…
KHATYN, Belarus (JTA) — Even by Soviet standards, the massive memorial complex near Minsk to the victims of Nazi atrocities stands out for its immense scale and ambition. Spread across half a million square feet — roughly the size of 10 football fields — the haunting Khatyn Memorial is essentially a graveyard not for people,…
Everyone now knows Jared Kushner met with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. Less known is that Kushner received a bag full of real dirt from another Russian he had met with. This dirt came from the the village of Nvgorod in Belarus, the hometown of Kushner’s grandparents. In his written statement to…
NOVOGRUDOK, Belarus (JTA) — People in Jared Kushner’s ancestral town tend to speak very highly of President Donald Trump. That’s generally the norm in the former Soviet Union. After all, Trump’s style goes over well in this part of the world — a survey conducted in November in Russia found that 45 percent of respondents said they…
— Residents of the Belarus birthplace of Shimon Peres gathered outside his childhood home to pay their respects to the most important international figure to ever emerge from their village. Villagers in Vishnyeva learned about the Israeli statesman’s death Wednesday from Limmud FSU, a Jewish education organization that has remained in regular contact with the remote community…
Since gaining international attention in 2010 with the release of nearly 100,000 classified logs of the war in Iraq, Wikileaks — often through the actions of its founder Julian Assange — has repeatedly come under fire for anti-Semitism. The organization, which routinely publishes large caches of confidential or otherwise private emails, cables and government documents,…
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