For about 2,000 years, until the early 20th century, Hebrew was virtually comatose. Once the mother tongue of the Jewish masses in their ancestral homeland, it ceased being a spoken language and became the sacred language of the synagogue and of rabbis and scholars studying religious texts. Its restoration as a utilitarian language, driven by […]
Israel’s next general election is about two years away, but the newly elected leader of the center-left Labor Party, Avi Gabbay, is already maneuvering for advantage. Gabbay, who was elected to his post in July, has moved the Labor Party rightward in the hope of siphoning votes away from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud […]
Israeli cuisine is a kaleidoscopic amalgam of tastes, flavors and aromas from every conceivable corner of the globe, matching the national origins of its diverse Jewish, Muslim and Christian population. The typical Israeli, if there is such a person, will most probably like a Polish-style kugel — a baked noodle pudding — as much as […]
Deutsche Bahn, the operator of Germany’s state railway, recently announced its intention to name a new high-speed train after Anne Frank, the Dutch Jewish diarist who perished in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the final days of the Holocaust. The news has caused an outcry because Anne Frank and her older sister, Margot, were deported […]
On the eve of World War II, British journalist J.M.N. Jeffries wrote Palestine — the Reality: The Inside Story of the Balfour Declaration, 1917-1938, a book that reflected his views of the endemic turmoil in Palestine. A foreign correspondent of The Daily Mail in London, he had covered World War I and the tensions between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, […]
Massoud Barzani, the longtime president of the semi-autonomous Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq, announced his resignation on October 29 in a tacit acknowledgement that his historic gambit for Kurdish statehood had failed spectacularly. In the face of Iraqi and regional animosity, Barzani — the head of the Kurdish Democratic Party — went ahead with […]
The northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco offers visitors eclectic sights worth remembering. The town of Olinda has one of the best-preserved colonial neighborhoods in Latin America. The resort of Porto de Galinhas, a center of the slave trade until the 19th century, has some of the finest beaches in the country. The state capital, Recife, is renowned […]
One of the most disgraceful incidents in modern Poland took place in Kielce on July 4, 1946, when a mob murdered 42 Polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. The pogrom, a watershed event signifying the persistence of antisemitism in Poland, prompted tens of thousands of Jews to emigrate. During the Communist era, this murderous incident […]
An award-winning Israeli television series is coming to Toronto. The first season of Your Honor, a 12-part crime drama, is being presented by the Toronto Jewish Film Foundation and the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies on November 5 and November 12 at 2 p.m. at Innis Town Hall, University of Toronto. Created by Shlomo Mashiach and […]
To paraphrase William Shakespeare, something is rotten at McGill University in Montreal. McGill, one of the world’s finest institutions of higher learning, is being dragged through the mud by a cabal of toxic students who can’t tolerate free speech and diversity of opinion, the very qualities a university should uphold and encourage. Last week, three students […]