(JTA) — When Benjamin Netanyahu put his controversial calls for judicial reform on pause two weeks ago, many thought the protesters in Israel and abroad might declare victory and take a break. And yet a week ago Saturday some 200,000 people demonstrated in Tel Aviv, and pro-democracy protest…

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(JTA) — In addition to juggling school, extracurriculars and trying to fit in, American Jewish teens have the added challenge of trying to foster a relationship with Israel in an increasingly hostile environment. Proposed judicial reforms by Israel’s far-right government and terrorist attack…

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    Charlie Yale, son of Sarah and Adam Yale, was awarded a Silver Key Award (Critical Essay) by Hastings College for the below piece, and has graciously allowed us to re-publish his article.

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When Adolf Eichman was on trial in Jerusalem in 1961, the court had documentation and testimony, but they also obtained more than 700 pages of transcripts of tapes, which Eichman himself recorded in Buenos Aires. The tapes were marked up with corrections in Eichmann’s own handwriting.

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(JTA) — I have long been a keeper of women’s stories, many of which relate to fertility and reproductive choices, experiences generally shrouded in secrecy. While I am honored to be trusted with these personal accounts, I look forward to, and am working toward, a time when women will be able…

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    “Six hundred thousand people on Ukraine’s contact line live in appalling conditions without electricty and gas, have intermittent water, face shelling and small arms fire on a daily basis, and don’t have access to a food market.”

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(JTA) — There is an old joke about the Jewish atheist who is excited to meet the Great Heretic of Prague. He arrives at the great man’s house on a Friday night, and is immediately told to shush while the Heretic lights Shabbat candles. Then they sit down for the Shabbat meal, during which th…

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We invite you to be our guest on Sunday, July 10, from 2-4 p.m., when the Jewish Federation of Omaha hosts an open house. This will include a guided Art Tour of the Staenberg Kooper Fellman Campus. Full disclosure: my name is on the program as co-chair with Shiri Phillips and we have a veste…

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Everybody called it 'Decoration Day' instead of 'Memorial Day.' To me, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, it was a holiday, a holiday which everyone I knew observed. Everything was closed, all the stores, all the restaurants, everything except one place--and I never went there. But I heard a…

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JERUSALEM (JTA) — I was on a short visit to Israel last week, and spent time with a friend with whom I have been engaged in a 30-year argument. Elli Wohlgelernter and I met when he was the managing editor of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and I was a staff reporter. We would argue about the f…

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JTA — When I last spoke to Seth Pinsky in January 2020, soon after he was appointed CEO of the 92nd Street Y, he was looking forward to the challenge of taking over at a legacy New York Jewish institution — unaware that a pandemic was about to sweep away nearly all of the assumptions he brou…

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(JTA) — When IKAR, the Jewish spiritual community where I serve as the director of community organizing, realized our long-held dream of buying land in Los Angeles so that we could build a home for ourselves, we invited the community to imagine what we’d like to see included as part of this …

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(JTA) — Late last year, months before a Russian missile landed near the Babyn Yar memorial outside of Kyiv, Ukraine, the site’s foundation announced plans for a new museum to honor the 33,771 Jews slaughtered there by the Nazis in September 1941.

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BERLIN (JTA) – I watch what is happening in Ukraine and I feel helpless, scared for the state of the world, terrified for my friends and former students and anxious about the future of the place that I called home for nearly four years of my life.

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Can you believe Hanukkah is almost here? I can’t. As I’m writing this, there are a million things to do and not enough time. Life has been getting frantic again, something I vowed I wouldn’t let happen after COVID-19. This was a chance to learn, I thought; we don’t have to be this busy all t…

Four Jewish friends were in a cafe. One exclaimed, “oy.” The second sighed, “oy vey.” The third moaned, “oy veyzmir.” The fourth said, “if you fellas don’t stop talking about politics, I am out of here!”

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(JTA) — An exhibit at the Jewish Museum in Manhattan, “Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art,” examines the Nazis’ theft of masterworks from the collections of the Jews they persecuted and of others they merely exploited. Andrew Silow-Carroll, the New York Jewish Week’s edito…