Poland’s historic “New Jerusalem” once housed a vibrant Hasidic Jewish community before being destruction in the horrors of the Holocaust.
Tag: jewish
Once a Muslim-majority nation, Kosovo is witnessing a quiet but growing movement of Albanians converting to Catholicism. Advocates of the shift argue they are reclaiming their ancestral faith, once suppressed under Ottoman rule. With deep historical roots and political implications, this trend is reshaping Kosovo’s religious and cultural identity — while also positioning it closer to Europe.
France’s churches are a rich religious heritage that, unlike other European countries, largely belong to the national or local governments. But with strained budgets and years of neglect, keeping these historic churches standing has become a daunting and costly struggle.
Updated May 16, 2024 at 11 a.m. The Warsaw Uprising officially ended on this day in 1943, when the remaining Jewish fighters were killed or captured by German forces. What was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising? The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was a military operation by the Jewish resistance during World War II aimed at resisting the […]
This wasn’t supposed to be about politics or identity or anti-Semitism, about war or peace. It’s a story about a name. What’s in a name? Nothing at all, says Mr. Shakespeare. Or maybe all of the above when the name is Israely and the year was 2023.
The debate over the war in Israel is raging on social media. In this divisive atmosphere, it is impossible to call out anti-Semitism in Muslim communities or on the right wing without being applauded by all the wrong people. What Germans are failing to acknowledge is how much the country’s own history has to do with this.
Reserved, not accustomed to the spotlight, capable of taking a step back and not overshadowing the president. In this time of crisis, Antony Blinken navigates geopolitics with the president’s full trust.
Sectors of the political Left around the world have practically lauded the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel — finally barely bothering to hide their good ol’ fashioned hatred of the Jews, rather than hiding behind anti-Zionist rhetoric. Something evil has been re-released.
In a deep-rooted divide that has plagued Poland for years, the role of non-Jewish citizens in the Holocaust remains a much debated issue. But now the increasingly popular far-right party Konfederacja is toeing the line of blatant Holocaust denial.
On this day in 1994, Israeli terrorist Baruch Goldstein entered the Cave of the Patriarchs, a holy site for Jews and Muslims, and opened fire on Muslim worshippers, killing 29 people and injuring more than 100 others. Who was Baruch Goldstein? Baruch Goldstein was an American-born Israeli physician and member of the far-right Kach party. […]
A neo-Nazi has been buried in the former grave of a Jewish musicologist Max Friedlaender – not an oversight, but a deliberate provocation. This is just one more example of antisemitism on the rise in Germany, and society’s inability to respond.
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Why Sweden Has An Antisemitism Problem
In October 1943, nearly the entire Jewish population of Denmark made a perilous crossing from their Nazi-occupied country to neighboring Sweden. Setting out from ports and beaches along the coast, some 7,000 people arrived in rowboats and canoes to the safe shores of the port city of Malmö. Now, 78 years later, in the same […]
Ephroim “Johnny” Jablon’s entire family was gassed to death. At 94, he can’t forget the smells and so many other details of the camps. Such memories are dying away.
It’s hard to find a starred halal or kosher restaurant, but scattered about the French capital, such upscale restaurants do exist.
Hezbollah and its patrons have spread their tentacles to South America with help from local friends including Venezuela’s socialist regime. Argentina is belatedly backing the Western stance against the international Islamist group.
The targeted murder by a Muslim of an elderly Parisian Jewish woman connects hatred of Jews today to that of Europe’s past. And it’s not just in France.
-OpEd- PARIS — It’s taken years for acts of violence carried out against French Jews to be recognized not as ordinary crime, but as the violent expression of a new form of anti-Semitism. By describing perpetrators as standard criminals, lone wolves or psychiatric patients, every possible effort was made to avoid acknowledging that in France, […]
“The Jews’ great concern,” reads the Thursday headline in French daily Aujourd’hui en France, above an image of a man wearing a skullcap. It comes after a teenager attacked and wounded a Jewish teacher who was wearing the traditional headgear Monday in Marseille, southern France. France is debating whether it’s still safe for members of […]
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The Last Seven Jews Of Egypt
CAIRO — Egyptian Jews are having to face the ugly truth that their community appears bound to vanish. As recently as 1947, Egypt’s Jewish community numbered up to 80,000. Today, by most accounts, there are just seven Egyptian Jews left, most of whom are elderly women in need of daily medical care. The last time […]
The latest deadly anti-Semitic terror attack happened to come in a city that once heroically saved most of its Jewish citizens from the Nazis. What’s the lesson for today?
CASABLANCA — Jews in Morocco stand in front of 2,000 years of history, and some more recent events. Seventy years ago, some 300,000 Jews lived in the country, which was then the largest Jewish minority in the Arab world. Today only about 5,000 Jews live here – the others have migrated for a variety of […]
Two writers explore the evolution of the Jewish and Chinese experiences, at home and abroad, finding lessons from what the two cultures share in common, and what they don’t.
Blaming French Jews for Israel’s actions in Gaza is just the latest vile expression of a rising wave of anti-Semitism that has resurfaced in the heart of Europe.
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The Jewish Ghetto And Its Phantom Opera
Nazis used a Czech military fortress to hold Jewish prisoners during World War II. Yet somehow art and music flourished, including one notable opera that had gone tragically unperformed.
Since the discovery, Csanad Szegedi, one of the founders of Hungary’s far-right party, has lost his old friends and found a new way to spend his Saturdays.
BERLIN — Ritual circumcision for Muslim and Jewish boys remains legal in Germany. Germany’s legislative body, the Bundestag, decided as much last year in what was a win for the country’s religious minorities. But Muslim girls must participate in co-ed swim classes, according to a recent decision by Germany’s highest court on such matters — […]
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Blond Ukrainians For The Good Samaritans
How one of the world’s most isolated and ancient religious communities made mating exceptions to be sure it doesn’t disappear from the face of the earth.
FEZ – It had served over the years as a prison, a carpet factory and a boxing gym. But last week, the building in this ancient Moroccan city’s central medina was officially returned to its original incarnation: the Slat-al-Fassiyine synagogue was inaugurated by King Mohammed VI after a long-anticipated restoration. Rare in the Arab world […]
KFAR KAMA – Bent down in his field in this lower Galilee town, Amjad Shami points out the countless underground tunnels dug by voles. Three years ago, he says, these rodents destroyed his entire harvest. Shami says he continues to try to fight them with pesticides, which do little more than poison his land, infect […]
Algerian-born, French-bred Haim Amsalem is a member of the Knesset, and now the sworn enemy of the ultra-orthodox Shas party that he helped found.
MUNICH – Our meeting takes place at Munich’s old Jewish synagogue on Reichenbachstrasse. Rachel Salamander and her Synagogue Reichenbachstrasse charity co-chair, attorney Ron Jakubowicz, are telling us about their plans for the synagogue’s future. The mission of the charity, which was launched in November 2011, is to save and restore the pre-war synagogue that was […]
-Analysis- FRANKFURT – Are Hamas and Hezbollah part of “the global left?” A few years ago, during the discussion following a lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, American philosopher Judith Butler claimed they were. And now the remark is coming back to haunt her. The Central Council of Jews in Germany has strongly criticized […]
JERUSALEM – It is almost prayer time in Ramot, the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in north Jerusalem, and men in black suits, white ties and black hats with wide brims are hurrying to the synagogue. On July 31, the 10-year-old “Tal Law” exempting ultra-Orthodox Jews from military duty expired, sparking a nationwide debate in Israel over the […]