Section: Jewish Telegraphic Agency (USA)
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, a former Soviet refusenik, addresses Russian parliament
(JTA) — Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein addressed the Russian parliament more than three decades after his release from a Soviet prison. A Ukraine-born Soviet prisoner of conscience, Edelstein was imprisoned in 1984 on trumped-up drug charges because he was teaching Hebrew. He spent three years doing hard labor in Siberian camps. “Today, I stand...
Ukrainian officials post footage of vandals defacing Holocaust memorial
(JTA) — City officials in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv published online security camera footage of vandals painting Nazi symbols on a Holocaust memorial in a bid to identify them. The municipality made the unusual move last week on its website, showing an image of an individual wearing a backpack and a hat squatting in front of a part of...
Ukrainian officials post footage of vandals drawing swastikas on Holocaust memorial
(JTA) — City officials in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv published online security camera footage of vandals painting Nazi symbols on a Holocaust memorial in a bid to identify them. The municipality made the unusual move last week on its website, in which it showed an image of an individual wearing a backpack and a hat squatting in front of a...
Ukraine city to hold festival in honor of Nazi collaborator whose troops killed Jews
(JTA) — A leader of Ukrainian Jewry condemned the hosting in Lviv of a festival celebrating a Nazi collaborator on the anniversary of a major pogrom against the city’s Jews. The municipality plans to hold “Shukhevychfest,” an event named after the nationalist collaborator Roman Shukhevych featuring music and theater shows, on June 30th....
These young Jews are optimistic about their future in Europe
Alisa Poplavskaya’s workshop on mindfulness was one of the offerings at the recent Junction conference on “transitions,” which drew more than 160 young Jewish adults to the German capital. (Bokeh Graphik/JDC) BERLIN (JTA) — It’s a drizzly Saturday morning in May. Some 160 young Jews, mostly European and ranging from Orthodox to...
Jared Kushner’s family is a legend in this Belarus town
Marina Yarashuk, director of the Museum of Jewish Resistance of Novogrudak, at the museum on June 1, 2017. (Cnaan Liphshiz) NOVOGRUDOK, Belarus (JTA) — People in Jared Kushner’s ancestral town tend to speak very highly of President Donald Trump. That’s generally the norm in the former Soviet Union. After all, Trump’s style goes...
Among Lithuania’s Jews, a fight for communal control takes a nasty ethnic turn
Dan Sofer, his wife and son in Vilnius, Lithuania, December 2016. (Courtesy of Sofer) (JTA) — Dan Sofer and his wife considered it a great honor when they became the first couple since the Holocaust to be wed in Lithuania by a chief rabbi of that country. Sofer, a Ukraine-born businessman from Israel, said his wedding in 2004 was a chance to play...
Swastikas painted on synagogue, rabbi’s headstone smashed in Ukraine
(JTA) — Two swastikas were painted on the front door of a synagogue in western Ukraine and, in a separate incident, the headstone of a prominent rabbi’s grave was smashed. The incident involving the swastikas was discovered last week in Chernivtsi, a city located some 250 miles southwest of Kiev, according to the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress....
In Western Europe, Israel went from darling to divisive in 50 years
Protesters in Paris demonstrating against a new Israeli settlement in the West Bank, April 1, 2017. (Thomas Samson/AFP/Getty Images) AMSTERDAM (JTA) — Shortly after the outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967, Ronny Naftaniel was soliciting donations on the street and putting a lot of money into a box emblazoned with the words “for Israel.” An...
Ukraine’s Jewish prime minister meets with Netanyahu in Jerusalem
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman of Ukraine met with Israeli officials, including his counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu, after an earlier visit was canceled over Ukraine’s support of a United Nations resolution condemning settlements. Groysman, his nation’s first Jewish prime minister, met Monday with Netanyahu in...
