The Jewish community in Helena, Montana, has reached its goal to buy a synagogue built there more than 130 years ago to use as a community and cultural center for Jewish residents and visitors. The Montana Jewish Project, the nonprofit group that spearheaded the purchase, closed the deal with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helena, said Rebecca Stanfel, president of the Montana Jewish Project’s board of directors. “Now, Helena’s Jewish community will have a permanent place to meet for religious observances and cultural events,” she said.

A view of a 1,200-year-old rural estate, discovered during excavations by the Israel Antiquities Authority during an expansion of the town of Rahat, Israel. The building dates to the early Islamic period in the 8th or 9th centuries.

AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov

The German Government has reached an agreement with the families of 11 Israeli athletes killed by Palestinian militants at the Munich Olympics in 1972, the New York Times said. The families had said they would boycott a memorial service commemorating the 50th anniversary of the attack. The last-minute deal came together after months of negotiations; the absence  of the athletes’ families from the memorial would have been a bitter reminder of a major crisis in the modern relationship between Israel and Germany, The Times noted.

“We welcome the fact that soon before the 50th anniversary of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, an agreement has been reached for a historical inquiry, the taking of responsibility and suitable compensation for the victims’ families,” President Isaac Herzog of Israel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany wrote in a joint statement.

The sum offered is 28 million euros (about $28.1 million), according to Israeli officials. The German authorities have been accused of botching the response to the attack in Munich on Sept. 5, 1972 — which left the athletes and a German police officer dead — and of withholding information and documents from the families for decades. The response is considered one of the biggest diplomatic rifts in the special relationship that the two countries have tried to build since 1965, 20 years after the Holocaust.

Israel had maintained that the athletes were not adequately guarded, and that the German authorities did not allow Israeli forces to help in the rescue of the kidnapped athletes. After a botched rescue attempt, Germany refused to halt the Games despite demands by the Israeli government.

In honor of her late Father, Tony Curtis, Jamie Lee Curtis is restoring her grandparents’ hometown synagogue in Mateszalka, Hungary. She announced that she will partner with the mayor of Mateszalka to turn the synagogue into “ a community center for celebrations and art and music.” She wrote on her Instagram account that the synagogue “is empty now, as the entire Jewish population was exterminated, but the building stands as a living tribute to those who lived there and continue to live there.”

The Curtis family synagogue in Mateszalka was built in 1857, and developed a rich history within the town’s Jewish community, the online magazine Kveller said. According to The Times of Israel, when the Nazis invaded in 1944, the Jews were rounded up and sent in cattle cars to Auschwitz, where the majority of them perished. Following the war, some 150 survivors returned to Mateszalka, but after the failed Hungarian Revolution in 1956, many of the remaining Jews immigrated to North America or Israel.

American investigators returned a rare silver coin to Israel that they say was minted as a marker of independence during the Great Revolt against Roman oppression of  66-73 A.D., and centuries later was looted from an archaeological site in the Valley of Elah.

According to the New York Times, the coin was seized in 2017 when collectors tried to sell it at an auction in Denver, where it was listed as having an estimated value between $500,000 and $1 million. But it did not clear the legal hurdles to be returned to Israel until this summer.

Experts say the coin, a quarter-shekel piece featuring palm branches and a wreath and dated to 69 A.D., is among the rarest coins remaining from the bloody Jewish uprising against imperial Rome. The Roman response included the sacking and burning of the Temple Mount in 70 A.D. and, in 73 A.D., the demise of the last Jewish holdouts at Masada. The minting of such coins by Jews during the rebellion was considered a major statement of sovereignty by people whom the Romans had forbidden from issuing silver coins.

The trail of the coin ultimately led investigators to Denver, where it was listed for sale by Heritage Auctions. Agents with U.S. Homeland Security seized the coin while the sale was underway. Earlier this year, the Israeli government enlisted the help of the Manhattan district attorney’s office to make the case that the coin was provably stolen. The district attorney’s office has a special unit that focuses on antiquities trafficking, and it determined it had jurisdiction because the coin had passed through Kennedy International Airport en route to Denver.

Production of the coins stopped in 70 A.D., the year the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans under Titus. Now they serve to provide us with incremental but important information about the ancient society that made them, experts say.

[Photo courtesy Manhattan District Attorney’s office]

New York State Governor Kathy Hochul has signed legislation that requires state officials to monitor Holocaust education in schools; antisemitism remains at record levels in New York, and surveys show a lack of knowledge among young people. The bill was signed into law on August 10 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.

The law directs the state’s education department to determine whether school districts are in compliance with Holocaust education requirements. The education department will need to determine also how noncompliant schools can meet the requirements.

New York State has mandated Holocaust education in schools since 1994, but surveys have found that many young people are ignorant of the Nazi genocide. A survey by the Claims Conference, which represents Jews seeking compensation for the Holocaust, found that 63% of young Americans and 60% of New Yorkers did not know that 6,000,000 Jews were murdered in the genocide. In New York, 58% could not name a single concentration camp, 19% believed Jews caused the Holocaust, and 43% did not know what Auschwitz was.

In addition to the education law, Hochul signed two other pieces of legislation at the event, both related to the Holocaust. The second bill requires museums to disclose the origins of artwork that were stolen under the Nazi regime. Some museums in New York display stolen artwork without acknowledging its provenance, the governor’s office said. The third bill requires the state’s Department of Financial Services to publicize banks that voluntarily waive wire fees for Holocaust reparation payments to ease financial stress for survivors. About a third of New York state’s 40,000 survivors live below the poverty line. In April, Hochul announced $2.6 million in funding to support the state’s Holocaust survivors.

 A mural that was painted in a Vermont Synagogue more than 100 years ago by Ben Zion Black a Lithuanian immigrant  — and hidden behind a wall — has been termed a rare piece of art and has been painstakingly moved and restored.

The large, colorful triptych shows the Ten Commandments with a lion on both sides, the sun beating down, and columns and rich curtains at the borders. It has been recognized as a rare representation of a kind that graced wooden synagogues in Europe that were largely destroyed during the Holocaust, said Josh Perelman, chief curator and director of exhibitions and interpretation at the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia.

Black, a sign painter, decorated the inside of the Chai Adam Synagogue in 1910, located in a Jewish neighborhood in Burlington. But the synagogue closed in 1939 when it merged with Ohavi Zedek. The original building went on to have other uses, including a carpet store. When the building was turned into apartments in 1986, Ohavi Zedek archivist Aaron Goldberg and a fellow synagogue member got the owner to install a wall in front of the mural. More than 20 years later, the wallboard was cut away, and photographs were sent to museums around the country, asking what should be done with the artwork. In 2015, the artwork was moved to the current Ohavi Zedek synagogue in Burlington, and the restoration process begun. About $1 million was raised for the project, and the mural was unveiled this summer

Senior Rabbi Amy Small commented on the mural project: “It is significant not only to the Jewish community and the descendants of those early settlers of Burlington, but also to other immigrants in the United States, which offered safety for Jewish and other families fleeing from harm,” she said.