The dinner menu on Jan. 26 at Ayat, a restaurant in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, included challah, a staple of Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine and a traditional offering on a Shabbat table. The bread was served with a complete dinner to more than a thousand guests who responded to an invitation to a free Shabbat dinner posted on Ayat’s Instagram page. “It’s about breaking barriers, fostering dialogue, and connecting on a human level. This evening is more [...]

Photographer Gillian Laub orchestrated a sweeping public art project in which her portraits of Holocaust survivors would be projected on the facades of buildings and landmark structures across Manhattan and Brooklyn. Here, Rabbi Aliza Erber, age 80, is projected against the Brooklyn Bridge on Jan. 27, the United Nations’ designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day, to draw attention to the Live2Tell project. “The number of Holocaust survivors in the world is dwindling, but the story must [...]

About 1,400 Torahs that survived the Holocaust in Moravia and Bohemia, were first shipped to the Jewish Museum in Prague and are now part of the Memorial Scrolls Trust, the London organization that administers the collection. The scrolls are never sold or gifted, but are allocated on permanent loan to synagogues that request one, The New York Times reported. Many of the scrolls had been burned, waterlogged, torn or scarred when synagogues were destroyed during [...]

As reported in The Forward... Jewish teens are looking at a new factor in their college search — antisemitism. A recent survey of nearly 2,000 B’Nai Brith Youth Organization participants across North America found that 64% said antisemitism on campus was an important factor in the decision regarding where to attend college. In fact, some students said they would withdraw applications to certain Ivy League schools. Harvard University said on Feb. 19 that it is [...]

Empty chairs at a Shabbat table outside Tel Aviv’s Museum of Art...one for each of the Israeli citizens held hostage in Gaza by Hamas.  

Giant pandas from China could be arriving in the United States again soon. According to The New York Times, Beijing is planning to continue its panda diplomacy with Western countries, a statement from the Chinese Embassy to the United States said. The China Wildlife Conservation Association has reached agreement with the San Diego Zoo in California “on a new round of international giant panda conservation cooperation,” according to the statement. The agreement keeps alive a [...]

A federal judge in Iowa has blocked much of a state law forbidding school libraries from stocking books depicting “sex acts,” in part because he said it was keeping a classic Holocaust memoir off shelves. U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher granted a preliminary injunction against the law, Iowa Senate File 496, on Dec. 29, just before a Jan. 1 deadline for schools to begin enforcing it. The “staggeringly broad” law, he wrote in his [...]

Amid Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, two boys — one Israeli and one Palestinian — act as symbols of a peaceful future in a new mural painted on the side of the building at 49 Wyckoff Avenue in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. The mural was intended to channel a sense of hope, said Michelle Mayerson, who helped organize and commission the work, executed by a Chilean street artist who goes by the name [...]

Penn President Resigns After Remarks At Congressional Hearing Liz Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, resigned on Dec. 9, four days after her response to a question about antisemitism posed to her and two other university presidents at a congressional hearing on Dec. 5. Her response angered many Jewish students, alumni and donors, and drew rebukes from Congress and the state’s Jewish governor. Magill was the first college president to resign after protests and [...]