Kosher offerings on supermarket shelves in America and Israel might have looked differently this High Holiday season had Rabbi Mendy Chitrik not undertaken a 3000 mile trip around Anatolia, Turkey’s Asian portion, this summer. While it may come as a surprise, despite only 15,000 Jews in the country, Turkey is a major supplier of kosher…
(JTA) — Portugal has approved about a third of approximately 33,000 applications for citizenship under its 2015 law for descendants of Sephardic Jews, according to official data. Applications based on the 2015 law, primarily from Israel, Turkey, Brazil and Venezuela, are behind a 10-percent increase in applications in 2018, which saw 41,324 such requests in…
Red carpet movie premieres can be so formulaic — glamorous starlets walk on a rug as lightbulbs flash — yawn. What better way to break up the uniformity of a red carpet event than with men dressed in Nazi uniforms? Not to mention a simulated concentration camp, a few German Shepherds, and a pile of…
President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to announce the withdrawal of 2,000 American personnel from Syria immediately provoked reactions comparing his approach to Syria to President Obama’s: “Mr. Trump’s view that American forces cannot alter the strategic balance in the Middle East, and should not be there, was fundamentally shared by his immediate predecessor, Barack Obama,”…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit back after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the “spirit of Hitler … has found its resurgence among some of Israel’s leaders,” in criticizing the country’s nation-state law. “The Jewish Nation-State Law is proof, with no room for doubt, that Israel is the world’s most Zionist,…
(JTA) — Turkey recalled its ambassadors to the United States and Israel after at least 50 Palestinian protesters were reportedly killed at the Gaza border. South Africa also recalled its envoy to Israel earlier on Monday, Agence France-Presse reported. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of “genocide” over the killings in Gaza. Tens of thousands…
February was one of the bloodiest months since the start of the Syrian civil war, seven years ago this Thursday. All throughout the past month, the Assad regime, along with pro-Iranian militias and Russia, escalated their assault on the rebel-held eastern Ghouta suburb of Damascus. Ghouta, the last pocket of the Syrian insurgency threatening the…
Today, 38 Nobel Laureates published an open letter in The Guardian urging Turkey’s President Erdoğan to reverse course on the steady erosion of civil liberties seen under his administration since an attempted coup in 2016. The letters signatories include 2015 Nobel Laureate in Literature Svetlana Alexievich, 2012 Nobel Laureate in Physics Serge Haroche, 2004 Nobel…
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