The Czech Jewish community has protested as “inappropriate” an invitation to Russian President Vladimir Putin to ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Czech Republic President Milos Zeman issued the invitation last month. Putin has neither accepted nor rejected the invitation, according to the French news agency AFP. Putin was invited last…
In a year where the conflict between Ukraine and Russia was fought not only with weapons but also with rhetoric about opposing anti-Semitism, Berel Lazar has been Vladimir Putin’s Jewish point man in the propaganda war. Following a spate of anti-Semitic incidents that accompanied Ukraine’s February revolution, the Russian president smeared Ukraine’s revolutionaries as “anti-Semites…
On the second night of Rosh Hashanah, a group of five or six men disrupted a Jewish concert in the Great Hall of Moscow’s International Music House with a tear gas attack. A half-hour into the program, the men, who were seated in the first row, began shouting menacing insults at rock star Andrey Makarevich,…
The chief rabbi of Omsk in southern Siberia, Asher Krichevsky, was ordered deported by Russian officials, according to Russian media reports. Krichevsky, 36, was told Tuesday that he and his family — a wife and six children — have 15 days to leave Russia. The rabbi, who has Israeli citizenship, has worked in Russia as…
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law on Monday making the denial of Nazi crimes and distortion of the Soviet Union’s role in the World War Two a criminal offence punishable by up to five years in jail. The law, described by critics as an attempt to curb freedom of expression to appease conservative Russians,…
Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, a chief rabbi of Ukraine, accused Russia of staging anti-Semitic “provocations” in Crimea in order to justify its invasion of the former Soviet republic. At a press conference in the Manhattan office of the United Jewish Communities of Eastern Europe, Bleich compared Russia’s behavior to that of the Nazis prior to…
I teach modern Jewish history. Usually, when I mention Ukraine in class, my students’ eyes glaze over. But lately that hasn’t been the case. The eyes of the world have been turned to Kiev, the city that was home to Sholem Aleichem, and the birthplace of Golda Meir. People are now wondering whether this revolution…
Spotted: A mannequin dressed as a Holocaust victim on display at L.A. Jock in West Hollywood, California. Oy. But there’s more to the striped uniform and yellow star than meets the eye. The display is meant as a symbol of protest ahead of a rally tomorrow against Russian president Vladimir Putin’s anti-gay policies, according to…
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