Section: Jewish Telegraphic Agency (USA)
Winter Olympics 2018: 5 Jewish storylines to watch
(JTA collage) (JTA) — The world is about to revolve around Pyeongchang, a mountainous county in the northern half of South Korea, for the upcoming Winter Olympics. Jewish fans won’t have quite as many standout athletes to cheer for this year as they did in 2016, when multiple American members of the tribe won medals at the Summer Games in...
Fans unfollow Dutch actress for vacationing in Israel
Victoria Koblenko posting a photo from Jerusalem. (Instagram) AMSTERDAM (JTA) — One of the Netherlands’ best-known actresses said hundreds of people unfollowed her on social media because she posted pictures from her visit to Israel. Victoria Koblenko, an award-winning movie, television and theater actress and journalist with 151,000...
Turns out, a Jewish woman was Miss Germany in 2011
Valeria Bystriskaia being crowned Miss Universe Germany in Berlin, July 7, 2011. (Courtesy of Bystriskaia) (JTA) — Last week, the story of a Jewish woman competing in the Miss Germany competition went viral, appearing in JTA along with media outlets around the world. Tamar Morali, 21, said organizers told her she was the first Jewish woman to get...
Turns out, a Jewish woman was Miss Germany in 2011
Valeria Bystriskaia being crowned Miss Universe Germany in Berlin, July 7, 2011. (Courtesy of Bystriskaia) (JTA) — Last week, the story of a Jewish woman competing in the Miss Germany competition went viral, appearing in JTA along with media outlets around the world. Tamar Morali, 21, said organizers told her she was the first Jewish woman to get...
‘Death to the kikes’ painted on wall of Jewish charity in Ukraine
(JTA) — Unidentified individuals wrote “death to the kikes” on the wall of a Jewish charity in western Ukraine. The black graffiti was discovered Monday on the exterior wall of Uzhgorod’s Hesed Shpira charity, which is funded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, or JDC, Eduard Dolinsky, director of the Ukrainian Jewish...
60,000 joined a Polish nationalist march. Should Jews be worried?
Some of the tens of thousands of nationalists who marched through Warsaw, Nov. 11, 2017. (Jakob Ratz/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images) (JTA) — The sight of far-right activists waving racist banners and shouting anti-Semitic slogans during a nationalist march in the capital of Poland over the weekend shocked many around the world. It was...
Rise in Russian, Turkish immigration to Israel bucking Western slump
(JTA) — Bucking a slump in Western immigration to Israel under its law of return for Jews, movement from Russia has increased in 2017 and more than doubled from Turkey. In total, the 23,415 immigrants who have come to Israel from Jan. 1 to Sept. 30 constituted a 2 percent increase over the corresponding period last year, an interim report by the...
Mila Kunis says local refused to let her see childhood home in Ukraine
Mila Kunis at the Regency Village Theatre in Westwood, Calif., Oct. 20, 2017. (Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images) (JTA) — Mila Kunis and husband Ashton Kutcher tried to visit the actress’ childhood home in Ukraine with her parents, but a local who opened the door would not let them in, she said in an interview. Kunis, who is Jewish and in 2012...
Israel’s president cheers a united Spain. Or did he?
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin meeting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy Brey of Spain, Nov. 6, 2017. (Haim Zach/Israeli Government Press Office) (JTA) — Israeli President Reuven Rivlin may court controversy back home, but in Madrid he is almost universally loved right now. That’s because during his visit to Spain this week, Rivlin – a Likud...
What was the Jewish role in 1917 Russian Revolution? Moscow museum gives a full picture.
Jewish organizations during the May Day demonstration at Marsovo Pole in Petrograd, Russia, 1919. (Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center) (JTA) — Of all the many loaded issues tied to the bloody history of Jews in the former Soviet Union, none is as sensitive today in that part of the world as their role in the 1917 revolution that brought the...
