JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Reclaiming Joseph’s Tomb

By Uriel Heilman · October 24, 2008

At Joseph’s Tomb, a site in a Palestinian city that is sacred to Jews, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is boiled down to its very essence, writes Isabel Kershner in The New York Times. Read the story here.

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Simchat Torah in Egypt

By Uriel Heilman · October 23, 2008

Brenda Gazzar has a dispatch in The Jerusalem Post on spending Simchat Torah in Alexandria, Egypt. In the synagogue with just 25 members, minyans are hard to come by.

0 Comments | Share This | Holidays, Judaism

A Jewish festival where there are no Jews

By Uriel Heilman · October 16, 2008

From “Studio 360:” For 18 years, the historic Jewish quarter of Krakow, Poland has been home to a Jewish cultural festival – nine days of dancing, lectures, and concerts. 25,000 people attend, most of them Poles with no Jewish family. Stephanie Rowden wondered what Jewish culture can mean in a place where it has been absent for 60 years.

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Why a chicken?

By Ami Eden · October 13, 2008

Ben Harris filed a report on the feud between animal-rights activists and Chabad-Lubavitch Chasidim over kapparos. Here’s his interview with Rabbi Shea Hecht about why the pre-High Holiday ritual must performed with a chicken.

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1 Comment | Share This | High Holidays, Holidays, Judaism, Orthodox, Podcast, Religion, Ritual

Preparing for Yom Kippur

By Uriel Heilman · October 7, 2008

• As society becomes fragmented and increasingly frenetic, there is more value than ever in the spiritual audit Yom Kippur provides, write Zaki Cooper and Michael Harris in the U.K. Guardian.
• Slate unpacks Kol Nidre – that prayer used by everyone from Neil Diamond to Beethoven, and by anti-Semites as evidence that Jews are duplicitous and two-faced.
• A Houston mother writes about her difficulty communicating with God on Yom Kippur ever since her prematurely born son, Aaron Joseph, died 13 years ago after just a few weeks of life.
• Haim Watzman links the U.S. elections and Yom Kippur in the Huffington Post, comparing the penitent Jew to the reflective voter.
• The “Big Brother” TV program being filmed in Israel will take an unprecedented one-day break – for Yom Kippur, reports The Associated Press.

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Rosh Hashana Girl (and Guy) Come to Israel

By Daniel Sieradski · July 1, 2008

Michelle Citrin and William Levin

Dina Kraft, JTA’s Israel Correspondent met up in Jerusalem with singer Michelle Citrin aka Rosh Hashana Girl and her creative partner and friend William Levin. They are the team who brought the world the two YouTube hits “Twenty Things to do with Matzah” and “I Gotta Love You Rosh Hashana” – part of their attempt to bring a touch of the young, hip, and artistic to being Jewish today.

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1 Comment | Share This | Judaism, Music, Podcast, Ritual

Debate on prisoner deal

By Uriel Heilman · June 30, 2008

Israel has been engaged in heated debate in recent days about the efficacy of trading Arab prisoners with blood on their hands for the remains of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah in July 2006.

The Jerusalem Post’s Matthew Wagner weighs in with a piece on what the Jewish sages might have said about this swap.

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Morality and realpolitik

By Uriel Heilman · May 19, 2008

Perhaps feeling besieged by the overwhelmingly negative media coverage of Israel’s 60th birthday – which seemed to be more an opportunity to question the Jewish state’s future than celebrate its past – the founding president of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, Yehezkel Dror, argues in an essay in the Forward that Israel shouldn’t worry too much about morals when it comes to securing Israel’s survival.

Here is his justification of the use of Israeli nuclear weapons:

...if the threat is sufficiently grave, the use of weapons of mass destruction by Israel would be justified if likely to be necessary for assuring the state’s survival, the bitter price of large number of killed innocent civilians notwithstanding.

But Dror is a bit disingenuous to write an entire piece about the need for realpolitik to supersede Jewish morality and not once mention the Palestinians. In doing so, he ignores the most pressing moral dilemma Israelis face today.

Most Israelis don’t need to decide whether or not Jerusalem’s Defense Ministry should expand trade ties with Beijing or Ankara, but what they should do when facing an angry Palestinian woman at a West Bank checkpoint who could be either pregnant or hiding a bomb, how to feel after reading a Peace Now report that 40 percent of Jewish homes in the West Bank were built on private Palestinian land, or what to tell their children when they see a soldier pull aside Arabs on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem and subject them to tough questioning about where they’re going and why.

Are these measures necessary to secure Israel’s existence? It’s a tough call Dror doesn’t address.

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Jon Voight on his commitment to Jews and Israel

By Daniel Sieradski · May 16, 2008

Earlier today I had the opportunity to speak with Academy Award winning actor Jon Voight who is in Israel for the state’s 60th anniversary festivities. While here, Voight joined Chabad-Lubavitch in welcoming children evacuated from the devastated Chernobyl region of the Former Soviet Union to Israel.  I spoke to Mr. Voight about his relationship to the Jewish community, his involvement with Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl campaign, and his affinity for the state of Israel.

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[Update] Here’s video of Jon Voight dancing on the Chabad telethon:

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Old matzah, new matzah

By Ami Eden · April 16, 2008

The Free-Lance Star in Fredericksburg, Va., published an ode to good old fashioned fried matzah:

In a holiday filled with ritual foods, matzo is the oldest symbol of salvation in the Passover Seder. In fact, the Seder can’t end until the last piece of matzo has been recovered from its ceremonial hiding place and eaten.

My memories of matzo are long and fond. My dad’s mother, Nanny Ann, used to make matzo brei for us whenever she visited.

She was stout and matronly, given to much fretting and hand-wringing unless she was busy in the kitchen.

But for those looking for something more avant-guarde, check out Gothamist’s roundup of New York eateries offering creative matzah-based dishes.

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