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Germany celebrates UNESCO World Heritage listing for sites known as the birthplace of Yiddish and Ashkenazi culture
(JTA) — Germany held a ceremony to celebrate the first German-Jewish sites to be given UNESCO’s World Heritage designation on Wednesday.
The sites in the upper part of the Rhine River valley are known as the origin point of Ashkenazi culture and where the Yiddish language first began to develop over 1,000 years ago. They were recognized by UNESCO, the United Nations’ education and cultural body, in July 2021, but the coronavirus pandemic delayed Germany’s celebration of the designation.
UNESCO recognized the Speyer Jewry-Court, a synagogue and yeshiva complex in the city of Speyer; the Worms Synagogue Compound; the Old Jewish Cemetery of Worms, the oldest known in-situ Jewish cemetery in Europe; and the Old Jewish Cemetery of Mainz.
“The unique community centres and cemeteries have had a lasting impact on the material Ashkenazic culture and are directly and tangibly associated with the creative achievements of the early Ashkenazic scholars,” UNESCO’s listing explains.
President Frank Walter-Steinmeier visited a synagogue in Mainz on Wednesday.
“Before July 27, 2021, there were 49 World Heritage sites in our country, from Roman Trier to the old Hanseatic cities of Stralsund and Wismar, from Aachen Cathedral to Wartburg Castle near Eisenach. The list reflected the diversity of culture and nature, but it had a large gap: there were no Jewish cultural monuments,” Steinmeier said in his address.
The mikvah, or ritual bath, in Speyer, Germany, seen Jan. 24, 2023, dates back to the 12th century. It’s known as the oldest remaining intact mikvah in Europe. (Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images)
He was joined at the celebration by Audrey Azoulay, the director general of UNESCO. Azoulay, a French Jew, is the daughter of Andre Azoulay, a Moroccan-born Jewish banker who currently serves as an advisor to Morocco’s King Mohammed VI.
Steinmeier stressed how the sites give evidence that Jewish history in Germany, both good and bad, stretches far beyond the Holocaust. The cities of Speyer, Mainz and Worms were the sites of large scale massacres of Jews during the Crusades and the 14th-century bubonic plague epidemic, but they were also the home of some of the greatest leaders of European Jewry, such as the famed Torah commentator known as Rashi.
“For centuries, Jews in Germany were seen as strangers, as others. They were repeatedly humiliated, excluded, deprived of their rights, persecuted, murdered — even before the National Socialists and their willing executors almost completely wiped out Jewish life in Germany and Europe,” Steinmeier said. “The monuments and gravestones in Speyer, Worms and Mainz tell of the deep roots of the Jews in our country, of the flourishing of their culture, of self-assertion and emancipation, of times of peaceful coexistence with the Christian majority.”
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Israel’s Netanyahu Hopes to ‘Taper’ Israel Off US Military Aid in Next Decade
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview published on Friday that he hopes to “taper off” Israeli dependence on US military aid in the next decade.
Netanyahu has said Israel should not be reliant on foreign military aid but has stopped short of declaring a firm timeline for when Israel would be fully independent from Washington.
“I want to taper off the military within the next 10 years,” Netanyahu told The Economist. Asked if that meant a tapering “down to zero,” he said: “Yes.”
Netanyahu said he told President Donald Trump during a recent visit that Israel “very deeply” appreciates “the military aid that America has given us over the years, but here too we’ve come of age and we’ve developed incredible capacities.”
In December, Netanyahu said Israel would spend 350 billion shekels ($110 billion) on developing an independent arms industry to reduce dependency on other countries.
In 2016, the US and Israeli governments signed a memorandum of understanding for the 10 years through September 2028 that provides $38 billion in military aid, $33 billion in grants to buy military equipment and $5 billion for missile defense systems.
Israeli defense exports rose 13 percent last year, with major contracts signed for Israeli defense technology including its advanced multi-layered aerial defense systems.
US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Israel supporter and close ally of Trump, said on X that “we need not wait ten years” to begin scaling back military aid to Israel.
“The billions in taxpayer dollars that would be saved by expediting the termination of military aid to Israel will and should be plowed back into the US military,” Graham said. “I will be presenting a proposal to Israel and the Trump administration to dramatically expedite the timetable.”
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In Rare Messages from Iran, Protesters ask West for Help, Speak of ‘Very High’ Death Toll
Protests in Tehran. Photo: Iran Photo from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law, via i24 News
i24 News – Speaking to Western media from beyond the nationwide internet blackout imposed by the Islamic regime, Iranian protesters said they needed support amid a brutal crackdown.
“We’re standing up for a revolution, but we need help. Snipers have been stationed behind the Tajrish Arg area [a neighborhood in Tehran],” said a protester in Tehran speaking to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. He added that “We saw hundreds of bodies.”
Another activist in Tehran spoke of witnessing security forces firing live ammunition at protesters resulting in a “very high” number killed.
On Friday, TIME magazine cited a Tehran doctor speaking on condition of anonymity that just six hospitals in the capital recorded at least 217 killed protesters, “most by live ammunition.”
Speaking to Reuters on Saturday, Setare Ghorbani, a French-Iranian national living in the suburbs of Paris, said that she became ill from worry for her friends inside Iran. She read out one of her friends’ last messages before losing contact: “I saw two government agents and they grabbed people, they fought so much, and I don’t know if they died or not.”
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Report: US Increasingly Regards Iran Protests as Having Potential to Overthrow Regime
United States President Donald J Trump in White House in Washington, DC, USA, on Thursday, December 18, 2025. Photo: Aaron Schwartz via Reuters Connect.
i24 News – The assessment in Washington of the strength and scope of the Iran protests has shifted after Thursday’s turnout, with US officials now inclined to grant the possibility that this could be a game changer, Axios reported on Friday.
“The protests are serious, and we will continue to monitor them,” an unnamed senior US official was quoted as saying in the report.
Iran was largely cut off from the outside world on Friday after the Islamic regime blacked out the internet to curb growing unrest, as videos circulating on social media showed buildings ablaze in anti-government protests raging across the country.
US President Donald Trump warned the Ayatollahs of a strong response if security forces escalate violence against protesters.
“We’re watching it very closely. If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States,” Trump told reporters when asked about the unrest in Iran.
The latest reported death toll is at 51 protesters, including nine children.