The spelling bee and JAPs

Rabbi Jason Miller writes Jewish Word Wins Spelling Bee, But 'Princesses' TV Show Will Offend.

Google glass Jewish applications

Yaffa Klugerman asks Can Google Glass transform Jewish life?

 

Senator Lautenberg honored

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg was honored Wednesday for his contributions to the Jewish community and Israel.

The New Jersey Democrat was feted at New York's Pierre Hotel at the annual gala for Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus life.

Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/news/us/article/NJ-senator-honored-for-service-to-Jewish-community-4558485.php#ixzz2UlEO8KVo

Stoning emergency workers

An Israeli fire fighting rescue team came under a bombing attack while they were attempting to fight a fire that broke out near Muslim homes, according to a statement released by an Israeli fire department.
Read more: http://www.yourjewishnews.com/2013/05/27375.html

Harnessing technology

One scholar likened it to finding the orphaned socks for generations of a family. Another compared it to law-enforcement’s use of DNA databases and face-recognition software.
The idea is to harness technology to help reassemble more than 100,000 document fragments collected across 1,000 years that reveal details of Jewish life along the Mediterranean, including marriage, medicine and mysticism.
Continue reading: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/world/middleeast/computers-piecing-together-jigsaw-of-jewish-lore.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Serving one year in prison for murder

Arab sources are saying that the IDF has arrested the three Palestinian Authority (PA) policemen who murdered yeshiva student Ben Yosef Livnat.

According to the reports, the three were freed from a PA jail after just one year's imprisonment. The IDF arrested them immediately upon their release.

The men had served a year in jail for the murder, and had returned to their police jobs 10 days ago after being freed last month, the PA official said.
Read more: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/168225#.UaG1Wiz8Lcc

The Teleki Square shul

Too often recently, Hungary has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. The elevation of the ultranationalist Jobbik party to the parliament in 2010 and the provocative, anti-Semitic statements made by their members that followed has led many to wonder: Who would want to be Jewish in this Central European, former Communist state?

However, hidden away through a courtyard in Budapest’s ramshackle District VIII, an area of the Hungarian capital known for its high population of Roma gypsies and immigrants, the shul ("synagogue" in Yiddish) on Teleki Square is quietly challenging this notion. It is one of the very last surviving "apartment synagogues" in the country and may well represent the spirited renewal of Jewish life that is currently sweeping the city.
Read more: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2013/0525/A-Jewish-renaissance-tucked-away-in-a-Budapest-apartment

Church of Scotland rejects call

THE Church of Scotland has set itself on an international collision course with Jewish leaders after rejecting outright a call to rethink its Israel stance.
Read more: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/church-clashes-with-jewish-leaders-on-stance-over-israel.21172528

Turning a blind eye

The leading Jewish civil rights group in the U.S. slammed anti-Semitic comments made in a Detroit church by Minister Louis Farrakhan, the head of the Nation of Islam.
..."It is deeply disappointing that so many Detroit leaders are apparently so willing to turn a blind eye to Farrakhan's anti-Semitism," said Heidi Budaj, regional director of the Michigan branch of the Anti-Defamation League. "Where are the voices in our community who are willing to stand up and say 'no' to racism and anti-Semitism?"
Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/22/jewish-group-denounces-farrakhan/2352937/

Jewish Time Jump

Shot dead by the FBI and the triple murder connection

Ibragim Todashev attacked the FBI agent who shot him after he had confessed to a direct role in the 2011 triple homicide in Waltham, Massachusetts, a federal law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the case told CNN on Wednesday.
Continue reading: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/22/justice/florida-fbi-shooting-boston/index.html

The victims were Brendan H. Mess, 25, Erik Weissman, 31, and Rafael M. Teken, 37.
The Forward reported on April 23 that  Weissman, "was outspoken about his Jewish faith" and Teken "attended predominantly Jewish Brandeis."

Anti-Semitism on the rise

Anti-Semitism is on the rise in many parts of the Middle East and in pockets of South America while corresponding Anti-Muslim sentiments are increasing in Europe an Asia, according to an annual US State Department report.


The 2012 report on religious freedom said expressions of anti-Semitism by government officials and religious leaders were of great concern, particularly in Venezuela, Egypt and Iran. At times, such statements led to desecration and violence, the report said.
Continue reading: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/anti_semitism_and_anti_isl_fxioHBMlE75o03R8vCoSIM

Racist rant

Tuesday night, just as Jews began celebrating the holiday of Shavuos, police officers were arresting two people for selling and buying illegal drugs just a few blocks away from 770. The incident then turned into a despicable racists rant by some of the residents.
Read more: http://crownheights.info/chabad-news/386077/video-narcotics-arrest-turns-into-anti-semitic-tirade/

Jewish life in Poland before the Holocaust

Polish Museum Conjures Jewish Life Before the Holocaust

Newseum honorees

Inspire is a glossy, English-language, online magazine published by al-Qaeda. It was conceived by Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric and al-Qaeda leader, who also contributed editorials. In 2011, President Obama ordered a drone strike against al-Awlaki as he was riding in a car in Yemen along with Samir Khan, Inspire’s Pakistani-American editor and publisher. So why hasn’t the Newseum — the interactive Washington museum of news and journalism — honored al-Awlaki and Kahn in its Journalist Memorial?
If your answer is “because the Newseum would never honor terrorists,” you’re on shakier ground than you might think.
- See more at: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/night-at-the-newseum/#sthash.0qlpHgVB.dpuf

Moroccan sentenced

A 22-year-old Moroccan man has been sentenced to more than five years in prison for planning terrorist attacks on Milan’s main synagogue and Jewish school.

Read more: http://www.jta.org/2013/05/17/news-opinion/world/moroccan-jailed-for-five-years-for-plotting-to-bomb-milan-synagogue#ixzz2ThC52c4P

Prof. Karabus lands in Cape Town

Loud cheers echoed through the arrivals hall of Cape Town International Airport when Cyril Karabus's plane landed just before noon on Friday.

His family, old colleagues and members of the public scrambled to the viewing glass to witness the SA Airways plane taxi along the runway.

A group of Cape minstrels spontaneously broke into a jovial song, causing SA Zionist Federation members to grab hands and dance around in circles.

Read more: http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/karabus-arrives-in-cape-town-1.1517584#.UZYpGSz8Lcc

A good Jewish investment

Marrying Jewish is a good investment.  Marriages between Jews tend to end in divorce less. The marriages tend to last longer and partners in marriages to Jews report less experiences with Antisemitism and by comparison to other major religious groups, are less likely to divorce.
Continue reading: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/marrying-jewish-is-a-good-investment/

Mounting evidence

Authorities in Massachusetts have developed "mounting evidence" against the alleged Boston Marathon bombers that would place them near the scene of a grisly 2011 triple homicide that has remained unsolved.
Officials told ABC News that preliminary forensic tests link Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, to the scene of the murders in Waltham, Mass.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/authorities-link-tsarnaev-brothers-2011-triple-homicide-report-article-1.1341207#ixzz2T1p7aeUM

Forced to pay legal costs

The leader of Rome's Jewish community has launched a stinging attack on Italy's judicial system after he was forced to pay the legal costs of a Nazi war criminal who unsuccessfully sued him.
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/09/rome-jewish-legal-nazi-war

The Jewish song writer

The National Review writes about the improbable life of Irving Berlin.

The man who gave us “God Bless America” was not born in America; he was born in Russia. The man who gave us “White Christmas” was not a Christian; he was Jewish.
Read more: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/347679/improbable-irving-berlin

Wagner's opera booed in Germany

A modern production of Richard Wagner's opera "Tannhauser" is causing a stir in Germany because of Nazi-themed scenes showing people dying in gas chambers and members of a family having their heads shaved before being executed.

A spokeswoman for the Dusseldorf opera house said Tuesday that members of the audience "booed and were shocked" by Saturday's opening performance.
Read more: http://www.rep-am.com/news/national/722607.txt

Backtracking over forcing children to eat unkosher meat

A French headteacher stirred up a storm when she sent a letter to parents, suggesting pupils would be forced to eat meat at school, because “secularism must be respected in its entirety”. She has since been forced to backtrack.
Read more: http://m.thelocal.fr/page/view/headteacher-slammed-for-suggesting-children-must-eat-meat

Jews who served in the Soviet red army

Israel's Jewish War vets are noticed — once a year

Zero tolerance on anti-Semitism

Hungary's prime minister has told an international assembly of Jews that his government has declared "zero tolerance" on anti-Semitism.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/05/05/hungary-prime-minister-addresses-jewish-meeting-vows-zero-tolerance-for-anti/#ixzz2SRvgF3vY

Ruling against Jewish day school

A circuit court judge has sided with the City of Evanston and rejected a Jewish day school's suit challenging the city's refusal to rezone a property on Hartrey Avenue for its use.
Judge Mary Anne Mason ruled Tuesday that the city's concern that the rezoning to permit the non-profit school would cost the city property tax revenue was a legitimate basis for its action.
...
She said she accepted the testimony of the school's then-president, Ari Shulman, that when he first told Alderman Ann Rainey, 8th Ward, of the school's plan to move to Evanston from it's location on California Avenue in Chicago, she told him to "keep your Jewish school on California."
...Mason also criticized what she called "inapproriate and unprofessional references" to "un-kosher logic and "parting of the Red Sea" in an email message then zoning administrator Bill Dunkley sent Rainey about the school's request.
Read more: http://evanstonnow.com/story/government/bill-smith/2013-05-02/56058/city-wins-zoning-battle-with-jewish-school

Her secret Jewish identity

There is a list of horrors rattling around inside Mary Gale’s head.
The 86-year-old tells me the story of her life, starting from the happy beginning as a girl growing up in a middle-class Jewish family in Lodz, Poland, a family that, like so many other Jewish families would be torn apart by the horrors of the Holocaust.
But Mary Gale has spent the past 70 years living with a burdensome secret, a lie she no longer wishes to conceal. She can pinpoint exactly when the lie began because it had to begin somewhere in order for her to survive.
Read more: http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/05/02/miriam-zimmerman-kept-her-jewish-identity-secret-for-70-years/