By Gavin Rabinowitz, JTA
• Published June 20, 2012
CHISINAU, Moldova -- To tour the largely empty Jewish communities of Moldova and its capital, Chisinau -- once known by Jews the world over as Kishinev -- is not to wonder where did all the Jews go but why there are any remaining. Overgrown cemeteries...
BARCELONA -- Jozeph Nassi, the vice president of Istanbul's Jewish community, describes the dilemma facing Europe’s Jewish communities. "When the father gives to the son, they both laugh. When the son gives to the father, they both cry," he said. Nassi...
Jennifer Bernstein will take over as the new chair of the Shalom Baby program, administered through the Jewish Community Center on behalf of the entire Jewish community. Bernstein takes over for Batya Wertman, who recently completed her two-year term....
From afar it appeared to be a luminescent snake, twinkling in the dusk that was just beginning to cloak the desert mountains framing the Dead Sea. Upon closer inspection it turned out to be hundreds of Jews from South Florida bearing glow sticks making...
By Ruth Ellen Gruber, JTA
• Published April 20, 2012
NIS, Serbia—In some alternate universe, it might be a Jewish dream: a Jewish cemetery with a restaurant and discount department store on its doorstep. But in this old Serbian town about 125 miles south of the capital of Belgrade, it’s more like a...
NEW YORK -- The owner of the New England Patriots joined writers, literary judges and supporters of the Jewish Book Council for the inaugural presentation of an award named after his widow, Myra Kraft. Fighting through tears, Robert Kraft thanked the...
TOKYO—Sitting in Tokyo shortly before the first anniversary of the tsunami, I recalled my surprise the first time a Japanese person thanked me, as a Jew, for Israel’s immediate response to the disaster. It was certainly not the time to instruct that...
JERUSALEM -- The Jewish Agency will provide emergency aid to the Jewish community of Greece facing a serious financial crisis. The Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency for Israel on Monday voted to grant about $1 million over two years to help Greece's...
By Alex Weisler, JTA
• Published February 15, 2012
ODESSA, Ukraine -- In a colorful room at the Tikva Children’s Home here, 30 young boys stand in two straight lines and wait for the cue signaling that they are to start singing. The children, students in a music class, are performing “Mind Your Manners”...
JERUSALEM -- Seventy-one Ethiopians arrived in Israel accompanied by lay leaders from the Jewish Federations of North America. After landing Thursday at Ben Gurion Airport, the new immigrants and the delegation of leaders were taken to an absorption center...
By Michael Stein, JTA
• Published January 31, 2012
PRAGUE -- A Czech Holocaust survivor published a diary of his Nazi concentration camp experiences. Michal Kraus, 81, published the diary, which he wrote shortly after World War II, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jan. 27. The diary will be...
By URIEL HEILMAN, JTA, DENVER
• Published November 9, 2011
After a decades-long partnership that saw the Jewish Agency for Israel serve as the official, exclusive Zionist arm of North America's Jewish community federations, the federation system is getting ready to date other partners. But Jewish Agency officials...
