World News

(New York Jewish Week) — Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt was a guest on the popular New York radio show The Breakfast Club on Wednesday, discussing the recent rise in antisemitism and the need to repair Black and Jewish relations. “I believe you call people in before you call people out,” Greenblatt said, explaining to hosts Charlamagne…

Matan Kahana was an F-16 fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force, so he’s not one to back down from a difficult mission. When he entered politics and served as Israel’s minister of religious services in Naftali Bennett’s coalition government, Kahana gave himself a politically perilous assignment: to loosen the grip of haredi Orthodox rabbis…

(JTA) — The recent Israeli elections, the fifth in less than four years, returned Benjamin Netanyahu to the driver’s seat for the third time. The twice and future prime minister appears able to cobble together a coalition that has been called the most right-wing in Israeli history. It will include three far-right and two haredi…

BERLIN (JTA) – In a landmark step, investigators commissioned by Germany’s main Jewish organization have concluded that abuse of power and sexual harassment did occur at Germany’s liberal rabbinical seminary — and some of it, they say, may have crossed the line into illegality. The 44-page “executive summary” of an investigation initiated by the Central Council…

Roya Hakakian is a poet, author, journalist and advocate for refugees. Every one of these roles is an offshoot of her own life experience as a child and teenager in pre- and post-revolutionary Iran and as an immigrant to the United States. Her poetry appears in many anthologies around the world, her books take a…

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Top Biden administration officials launched a roundtable on antisemitism on Wednesday by describing a “rising tide of antisemitism” and likening the atmosphere in the United States to that of Europe, where Jewish worship is held under lock and key. “Right now, there is an epidemic of hate facing our country,” said Douglas…

(JTA) — Many in the Libyan-Jewish diaspora know that even if they return to Libya some day, they would never again be able to visit the graves of their parents, grandparents or other loved ones who lived in the country while it was home to more than 30,000 Jews.  A new initiative in one of…

(New York Jewish Week) — A selfish social media influencer, an all-knowing, benevolent ghost known as “Harry the Hanukkah Fairy” and “Tiny Tim” Cratchet, the good-natured ill child from Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” may seem like they all come from different worlds, but each appears as a character in “A Hanukkah Carol, or GELT…

(JTA) — Volodymyr Zelensky, the Jewish president of Ukraine, was named Time’s “person of the year” on Wednesday for galvanizing “the world in a way we haven’t seen in decades,” in the words of the magazine’s editor-in-chief. “From his first 40-second Instagram post on Feb. 25 — showing that his Cabinet and civil society were…

BERLIN (JTA) — Just days before news of a planned far-right terrorist plot to overthrow Germany’ government has stoked fears about the rise of extremism here, government officials approved Germany’s first-ever program specifically designed to fight antisemitism and promote Jewish life. Approved last Thursday by the entire German Cabinet and presented in Berlin by Felix…