During the NBA playoffs, people were beginning to notice that the uniforms worn by the Dallas Mavericks seem not to say “Mavs,” rendered in all caps, but “Maus,” the title of Art Spiegelman’s 1986 bestseller, a graphic novel about the Holocaust. Louis Keene, a staff reporter at The Forward, covering religion, sports and the West Coast, decided to call Art Spiegelman to see what he thought of the Mavs/Maus mixup. “That’s funny,” Spiegelman said. “I [...]
The German government has agreed to allocate $1.5 billion in Holocaust reparations this year, setting a new record for how much the country is spending to support survivors. The increase from a total of $1.4 billion last year is due to a rise in the amount the government is paying to reimburse survivors’ medical expenses. But the sum paid directly to survivors has once again declined, reflecting the accelerating deaths of survivors. And the growth [...]
In a bittersweet ceremony held on Sunday, June 23, the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh broke ground for a memorial and a new Tree of Life building. The synagogue was the scene of a mass shooting on Oct. 27, 2018, when a gunman opened fire and killed 11 worshippers. The building will house a sanctuary for the Tree of Life congregation — one of three congregations that were meeting at the synagogue at the [...]
In a star-studded Tony Awards night, Jewish winners claimed many of the statues: Shaina Taub won for best book of a musical and best score for her musical “Stuffs.” Alex Edelman won a special Tony for his show, “Just For Us,” in which he chronicles his infiltration into a neo-Nazi meeting. Winners for directing included Danya Taymor, niece of Julie Taymor, for “The Outsiders,” and Daniel Aukin, son of directors David Aukin and Nancy Meekler [...]
The Money Kings, by Daniel Schulman The saga of the German-Jewish immigrants — with now familiar names like Goldman and Sachs, Kuhn and Loeb, Warburg and Schiff, Lehman and Seligman — who influenced the rise of modern finance. These industrious immigrants would soon go from peddling trinkets and buying up shopkeepers’ IOUs to forming what would become some of the largest investment banks in the world. Schulman chronicles their paths to Wall Street dominance, as [...]
In a landmark ruling this month, Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled unanimously that the government must draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students into the military, that no longer is there any legal framework to continue the decades-long practice to grant them blanket exemption from army service, The Times of Israel reported. The justices made clear they were not telling the state how many Haredi yeshiva students to draft or how quickly, indicating that the process could [...]
Imagine a Jewish resort in the mountains where graduate students are playing board games and children are splashing in the swimming pool. Senior citizens are listening to lectures under a larger maple tree. And all of this is going on in Yiddish. The Yiddish Vokh (Yiddish week), sponsored by the Yiddishist organization Yugntruf, has been hosting retreats like this for 48 years. Guests spend a week together steeped in Yiddish, on the grounds of the [...]
Left photo, people attend the annual Holocaust remembrance event, the “March of the Living” in memory of the six million Holocaust victims at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Oswiecim, Poland on May 6, 2024. On the right, President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson stand to honor the memory of the six million during the annual Days of Remembrance ceremony at the Capitol in Washington on May 7. AP Photos Czarek [...]
When does Shabbat start on the moon? NASA has decided that the moon needs its own timekeeping system, so how will the moon’s now-nonexistent Jewish residents pray, light Shabbat candles, and observe the festivals? The question is interesting because the Jewish calendar is beholden to the sun, and the sun appears and disappears at unusual times when you’re not on Earth. An astronaut on the International Space Station will see the sun rise and set [...]
Minouche Shafik, president of Columbia University, said that four students have been suspended from the university for an event held in March at which the speakers praised Hamas and other terror groups. The suspension was f irst reported in the Columbia Spectator, the campus newspaper. The student-led event, titled “Resistance 101,” drew harsh criticism for alleged antisemitism on campus. The suspensions marked a significant step in Columbia’s response to anti-Israel activities that have rocked the [...]
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