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Holocaust survivor and painter Frederick Terna dies at 99
(New York Jewish Week) — Holocaust survivor and painter Frederick Terna, whom the New York Jewish Week honored as one of our “36 to Watch” this year, has died at 99.
Terna was born in Vienna in 1923 and grew up in Prague. Starting in 1941, he was imprisoned in four Nazi concentration camps, including Terezin, where he began to make art, and Auschwitz and Dachau.
Following the war, Terna moved to Paris where he “informally studied” at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and the Academie Julien. There, according to his web site, “he was inspired by the work of the Cubists and post-Impressionists.”
Terna moved to New York in 1952 and began to infuse his art with textural elements. “Most of my work has some biblical reference,” Terna told the New York Jewish Week our “36 to Watch” questionnaire, “including stained glass windows in a synagogue in Panama and our own shul, the Kane Street Synagogue.”
In a 2019 New York Times review of “Place/Image/Object,” a three-person exhibition at the Jack Barrett Gallery on the Lower East Side, Terna’s work — “a series of perceptive ink drawings of trees, boats and buildings” — is characterized as the “fulcrum” of the show. “Though the style varies widely, Mr. Terna’s zeal in gathering visual details is leavened by the obvious joy he took in recording them,” the reviewer wrote.
Over the years, Terna’s work was collected by a variety of museums and institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Albertina Collection in Vienna and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
Terna, who continued painting in Brooklyn into his late 90s, was also a speaker on the Holocaust in high schools and an active participant in Witness Theatre.
Terna is survived by his second wife, Rebecca Shiffman — whom he met in 1982 at an event for second-generation Holocaust survivors and married shortly thereafter — and their son, Daniel Terna.
His funeral will be held Sunday at 10 a.m. at the Kane Street Synagogue in Brooklyn and will be live-streamed on their web site.
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The post Holocaust survivor and painter Frederick Terna dies at 99 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Puppet Monty Pickle is guest on the Forward’s ‘Yiddish Word of the Day’
It’s not every day that a kosher dill pickle puppet gets a chance to learn some Yiddish.
Monty Pickle, star of the children’s series The Monty Pickle Show, recently joined Rukhl Schaechter, host of the Forward’s YouTube series Yiddish Word of the Day, for an episode teaching viewers the Yiddish words for various wild animals.
Or as they’re called in Yiddish: vilde khayes.
The Monty Pickle Show, a puppet comedy on YouTube and TikTok, aims to show young viewers what it means to be Jewish in a fun, lively way. The series was created by the Emmy Award-winning producers of Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock.
So far, he’s met a number of Jewish personalities, including rabbis, musicians and chefs, and explored holidays like Rosh Hashanah, Hanukkah and Passover.
Sitting alongside Rukhl during the lesson, Monty eagerly tries to guess what each word means, providing for some very funny moments.
The post Puppet Monty Pickle is guest on the Forward’s ‘Yiddish Word of the Day’ appeared first on The Forward.
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IDF Nabs Islamic State Terror Suspect in Syria
Guns seized in the course of the operation. Photo: IDF Spokesperson via i24
i24 News – Israel Defense Forces soldiers conducted an operation on Wednesday in the area of Rafid in southern Syria to apprehend a suspected terrorist affiliated with ISIS, the military spokesperson said on Saturday.
The announcement comes as Washington announced a major operation to eliminated Islamic State terrorists in Syria after three Americans lost their lives in a jihadist attack in Palmyra.
The Israeli soldiers completed the operation in Syria “in cooperation with IDF intelligence,” the statement read, adding that “the suspect was transferred for further processing in Israeli territory.”
Additionally, during the operation, weapons were found and seized.
IDF troops “continue to remain deployed along the Golan Heights border in order to protect the State of Israel and its citizens,” the statement from the spokesperson concluded.
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Report: Trump Admin Envisions Transformation of Gaza into Chic High-Tech Metropolis
US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, Washington, DC, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
i24 News – The US administration of President Trump vision for the future of Gaza has it transformed into a high-end high-tech hub of luxury and innovation, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
A team of officials understood to be led by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff developed a draft proposal to convert the war-ravaged Palestinian territory into a glittering metropolis, propelling Gazans from poverty to prosperity.
US officials with familiarity with the plan—pitched to foreign governments and delegations as a PowerPoint presentation— are cited in the report as saying that, understandable open-endedness of a project in its early phase notwithstanding, the blueprint has many lacunae and leaves crucial questions unanswered.
Critics cite the plan’s silence on the thorny question of disarming Hamas, the Islamist terror group that ruled Gaza for the past 15 years, and initiated the cross-border incursion and massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023; the attack launched the devastating war that has left much of the coastal territory in ruins.
The plan’s projected cost is put at $112.1 billion over 10 years, with Washington prepared to commit support to the tune of some $60 billion in grants and guarantees on debt for “all the contemplated workstreams” in that time period.
The question of where two million Gazans would reside during the costly and lengthy rebuilding is also left unaddressed, it is understood.
Similar-sounding plans have been mooted by the Trump administration even before it managed to broker a ceasefire in October that paused the two year-long war.