By Maxine Dovere JointMedia News Service NEW YORK – More than three years after the discovery of fraudulent activity at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (“Claims Conference”), which continued for about a decade-and-a-half and deprived Holocaust survivors of more than $57 million, former Claims Conference Director of Hardship and Article 2 Funds [ Read More...]

Members of the Ohio Statehouse Holocaust Memorial Artist Selection Committee met on Monday, May 6 to select an artist to design a Holocaust Memorial on the grounds of the Ohio Statehouse in downtown Columbus. Daniel Libeskind’s design, of Studio Daniel Libeskind in New York City, was chosen by the committee, whose members include representatives from [ Read More...]

IRS flagging controversy may extend to pro-Israel groups (JNS) The admission of a policy violation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), in which it flagged conservative political groups, has brought to light a similar episode involving a pro-Israel group. Lori Lowenthal Marcus, president and founder of the pro-Israel group Z Street, wrote for The Jewish [ Read More...]

By Susie Davidson JointMedia News Service BOSTON – What do Israel and Massachusetts have in common? Many recent comparisons have centered on the fact that, when the Boston Marathon bombings occurred, Bostonians got a taste for the kind of attack Israelis endure on a regular basis. To that end, Israeli trauma teams were called upon [ Read More...]

By Gil Shefler Jewish Telegraphic Agency NEW YORK – Yosel Tiefenbrun looked in the mirror and he liked what he saw. The 23-year-old Chabad rabbi and apprentice at Maurice Sedwell, a bespoke tailor’s shop on London’s Savile Row, was wearing a vintage double-breasted jacket with gold buttons, tasseled Barker shoes, a claret bow tie and [ Read More...]

Shuls merge to stay afloat

By Alina Dain Sharon JointMedia News Service Since the Boston Marathon explosions in April, the largely Muslim Russian territory of the North Caucasus has come back to the forefront via Chechnya, where the family of the Boston bombers’ father originated, and nearby Dagestan, the native land of the bombers’ mother and where the elder Tsarnaev [ Read More...]

By Ron Kampeas Jewish Telegraphic Agency WASHINGTON (JTA) – A same-sex Israeli couple struggling against U.S. immigration laws are set to become the faces of the fight to extend one of the foundations of immigration policy to gays and lesbians. Adi Lavy and Tzila Levy have been caught in the bureaucratic red tape of the [ Read More...]

By Peter L. Rothholz JointMedia News Service LOS ANGELES – Born in Canada into an immigrant Jewish family in 1915, Nobel Prize-winning author Saul Bellow had a traditional Jewish upbringing, which included Torah study, Talmud, and Hebrew. Yet Rabbi David Wolpe observes that Bellow had an ambivalent relationship with Judaism. “It was part of who [ Read More...]

Celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month at Main Library Celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamiliton County with a guest lecture by Carmi Neiger at the Main Library Sunday, May 19, at 2 p.m. in the Genealogy & Local History Program Space on the third floor. Neiger, an assistant professor [ Read More...]