Madonna posts plea to Pope Leo urging him to go to Gaza ‘before it’s too late’

In two social media posts, the pop star said that she was “not pointing fingers, placing blame or taking sides”.

By Grace Gilson (JTA)

Madonna

Pop icon Madonna posted an urgent plea to Pope Leo Monday urging the Catholic leader to “go to Gaza and bring your light to the children before it’s too late.”

The post marked one of the first times that Madonna has commented on the ongoing war in Gaza since she joined a list of celebrities in a campaign called #NoHostageLeftBehind weeks after Hamas’ 7 October, 2023, attack on Israel.

In two similar posts on Instagram and X, the superstar, who was raised Roman Catholic, said she was calling on the new pope to visit the besieged enclave because he is “the only one of us who cannot be denied entry.”

In ‘Oppenheimer’ trailer, the atomic bomb is born – and Einstein weeps

Oppenheimer and his team of scientists tested the weapon there before it was eventually dropped on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

By ANDREW LAPIN/JTA

Albert Einstein (Middle) is seen standing between Yiddish poet Itzik Feffer and Russian Jewish actor Solomon Mikhoels in 1943. Feffer would be killed in the Night of the Murdered Poets, while Mikhoels was killed in what may have been an assassination ordered by Joseph Stalin.   (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

(JTA) – “Oppenheimer,” the hotly-anticipated Christopher Nolan biopic about the Jewish nuclear physicist who developed the atomic bomb, will include another familiar Jewish face when it opens this summer: Albert Einstein.

A new trailer for the drama, released this week, includes a brief glimpse of the scientist’s unmistakeable visage, as rendered by the Oscar-nominated Scottish

For Mallorca’s Jews, their first ‘public’ sukkah is a triumph over the Spanish Inquisition

A leather shop that used to be a synagogue in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Cnaan Liphshiz

(JTA) — Before the Spanish Inquisition, the island of Mallorca had a sizeable Jewish community. Every fall, the island became dotted with the leaf-roofed huts that Jews are commanded to erect during the holiday of Sukkot.

But that all changed under the Inquisition’s campaign of persecution that began in 1488 (four years before it started on Spain’s mainland) and was only officially abolished centuries later in 1834.

This year, however, the island’s tiny Jewish community in the capital Palma is determined to reintroduce its Sukkot tradition with a public statement.

Ahead of the holiday this week, the Jewish community along with the municipality of Palma have erected what organizers are calling the island’s first “public” sukkah since the Inquisition, situated in the city’s former Jewish Quarter.

Indonesia Muslim groups demand closure of country’s first-ever Holocaust exhibition

Display at country’s only synagogue criticized over claimed attempts by Israel to normalize relations; rabbi says he wants ‘to educate Indonesians on the danger of antisemitism’.

By JORDYN HAIME

Rabbi Yaakov Baruch makes a speech at the Shaar HaShamayim synagogue in Indonesia. (Yaakov Baruch via JTA)

JTA — Some Muslim groups in Indonesia are demanding the closure of the country’s first permanent Holocaust exhibition, charging that it is part of an effort to normalize Indonesia’s relations with Israel.

The exhibit launched timed to International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 and is located at Indonesia’s only synagogue, Shaar HaShamayim, located in Indonesia’s North Sulawesi province. “Shoah: How is it Humanly

Amnesty International is set to accuse Israel of apartheid. Jewish groups say the report could ‘incite violence.’

The Amnesty International logo is seen in their office in Hong Kong, October 2021. (Isaac Lawrence/AFP via Getty Images)

(JTA) — Amnesty International is set to become the latest human rights organization to describe Israel’s activities in relation to Palestinians as “apartheid” when it releases a special report on Tuesday, prompting a strong rebuke from major U.S. Jewish groups that argue the report could “inflame existing tensions and incite violence.”

The report was leaked to NGO Monitor, an Israeli watchdog, which published an extensive critical analysis online on Monday.

According to a page posted online before the release by NGO Monitor, the Amnesty report appears to extend the apartheid designation to Israel’s treatment of its Arab citizens, particularly during clashes inside Israel last May sparked by Israel’s conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. On Tuesday, when the report was released,

In Spain, small towns are unearthing ancient synagogues to resurrect Jewish history — and attract tourists

A view of the interior of the Synagogue of Lorca in Murcia, Spain. (Museo Arqueológico Municipal de Lorca)

MADRID (JTA) — Beneath a sprawling 14th-century building with moss-furrowed terrace walls and interiors painted in garish strokes of purple and yellow lie what could be the remains of Spain’s second-largest synagogue from the medieval era.

The 7,500-square-foot estate, currently being explored by researchers and archeologists, is nestled in a narrow alley in Utrera, a small city in the Seville province in southwest Spain. It sits covered with the geraniums popular in the city’s historic Jewish quarter.

The property has had a lengthy and multifaceted history as a hospital, in the 17th century; a Catholic chapel; an orphanage, and most recently, in the 20th century, as a school, a restaurant and a cocktail bar.

Jewish groups slam top Presbyterian official for equating Israeli occupation with ‘slavery’ days after Texas attack

Rev. J. Herbert Nelson, then the director of the Presbyterian Church Office of Public Witness, at a prayer service outside the United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill, Oct. 8, 2013. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

(JTA) — U.S. Jewish groups slammed a top Presbyterian Church official for Martin Luther King Day remarks that equated Israel’s West Bank occupation with slavery and implied that American Jews have the influence to get the U.S. government to end it.

“The continued occupation in Palestine/Israel is 21st-century slavery and should be abolished immediately,” Rev. J. Herbert Nelson, II, the stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church USA said in remarks released Monday.

Spain and Portugal have naturalized more than 90,000 descendants of Sephardic Jews since 2015

Two Israeli women arrive in Lisbon, Portugal, Feb. 15, 2016. (Cnaan Liphshiz)

(JTA) — At least 90,000 descendants of Sephardic Jews have become citizens of Portugal or Spain since 2015, when those countries passed laws offering a naturalization process for such applicants, according to the most updated information data from the two countries.

The laws were meant to atone for the Inquisition, a campaign of religious persecution unleashed at the end of the 15th century on the hundreds of thousands of Jews who had inhabited the Iberian Peninsula and flourished there.

Spain has received at least 153,000 applications for citizenship, while Portugal has received at least 86,000 applications, according to data published in Spanish and Portuguese media recently as part of annual reports on immigration trends.

Nearly 1 in 4 Israelis will be ultra-Orthodox by 2050, study says

National Economic Council says Haredi Jews will make up 3.8 million of projected 16 million Israelis in 30 years, thanks to community’s high birth rates.

By SHIRA HANAU

Illustrative: Ultra-Orthodox men during a ceremony in Meron, near Safed, on December 7, 2020. (David Cohen/Flash90)

JTA — Nearly one quarter of Israel’s population will be ultra-Orthodox by the year 2050, according to projections by Israel’s National Economic Council.

Israel’s current population of 9.2 million is expected to grow by 70 percent to nearly 16 million by 2050. Of those 16 million, about a quarter, or 3.8 million, are projected by Israel’s National Economic Council to be ultra-Orthodox.

500 years after the Inquisition, Spain finally has a vibrant kosher wine industry

Barrels of Elvi Wines' Clos Menorah vintage sit in the winery in Priorat, Spain. (Courtesy of Elvi Wines)

MADRID (JTA) — Located in the Priorat region of Spain, hidden in the steep hills and lush mountains of the Tarragona province, 100 miles southwest of Barcelona, sits the Celler de Capçanes winery.

The cooperative winery, founded in 1933, has seen its reputation for high-end vintages grow steadily over the decades. And in 1995, it was approached with an unusual request: A Jewish family from Barcelona looking for domestically-sourced wine asked whether the winery would be willing to manufacture one of Spain’s first kosher wines in hundreds of years.

Jews played a significant role in producing wine in Spanish-speaking lands for centuries — until they were expelled under the Inquisition of 1492. Despite the fact

United Arab Emirates to join Israel in moon shot

Graphic of the Beresheet spacecraft (Courtesy/SpaceIL)

(JTA) — The next time Israel tries to land a spacecraft on the moon, it will have some neighborly help.

United Arab Emirates and Israel plan to land Israel’s un-crewed Beresheet craft on the moon in 2024 in a joint space exploration deal, Haaretz reported on Wednesday.

Israel’s first attempt to land a lunar module on the moon failed in 2019 when it crashed.

With dozens of world leaders watching, Sweden looks to turn around its reputation on antisemitism

From left: Holocaust survivor Dina Rajs, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven and World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder onstage at the Malmö International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Antisemitism in Malmö, Sweden, Oct. 13, 2021. (Jonas Ekstromer/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images)

MALMÖ, Sweden (JTA) — Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city, has in recent years become known as a hotbed of antisemitism.

With around one third of its inhabitants born outside of Sweden, many of them often living in ethnically homogenous neighbourhoods, the city has also become a synonym for Sweden’s integration problems.

But this week, Malmö — and by extension, Sweden’s government — aimed to turn that reputation on its head with a conference about combating antisemitism

At this Tel Aviv cafe, baristas will serve you espresso — and let you know about Jesus

HaOgen Cafe, in central Tel Aviv, is an outpost of a Messianic Jewish organization. (Abby Seitz)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — From the outside, HaOgen Cafe looks a lot like the many other espresso spots that line the streets of Tel Aviv.

Located just north of the central Dizengoff Square, it has floor-to-ceiling windows and a colorful chalkboard sidewalk easel that, on a recent weekday, advertised breakfast sandwiches and an upcoming acoustic concert. Inside, a crowd of 20- and 30-somethings sit at tables, typing away at laptops. It’s decorated with string lights and floor plants, with upbeat quotes and doodles scribbled in marker on the opaque windows in the back.

But HaOgen also offers something its neighborhood competitors do not — the gospel of Jesus Christ.

For Mallorca’s Jews, their first ‘public’ sukkah is a triumph over the Spanish Inquisition

A leather shop that used to be a synagogue in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Cnaan Liphshiz

(JTA) — Before the Spanish Inquisition, the island of Mallorca had a sizeable Jewish community. Every fall, the island became dotted with the leaf-roofed huts that Jews are commanded to erect during the holiday of Sukkot.

But that all changed under the Inquisition’s campaign of persecution that began in 1488 (four years before it started on Spain’s mainland) and was only officially abolished centuries later in 1834.

This year, however, the island’s tiny Jewish community in the capital Palma is determined to reintroduce its Sukkot tradition with a public statement.

Torah scroll the Nazis stole for their post-Holocaust ‘Jewish museum’ returns to service in Prague

A Torah scroll that the Nazis stole from a Czech congregation on display at The Memorial Scrolls Trust in London. (Courtesy of the European Union for Progressive Judaism)

(JTA) — A Torah scroll that the Nazis stole from for their planned museum on Judaism in Prague will return to use there on Simchat Torah, a holiday that falls later this month and celebrates the seminal Jewish text.

Memorial Scrolls Trust, a London-based nonprofit that preserves Torah scrolls and other scripture, on Sunday said it will transfer scroll no. 1052, as it is catalogued there, to the use of Ec Chaim, a Progressive Jewish congregation in the Czech capital, ahead of the holiday that begins on Sept. 27.

In 1942, the Nazis seized the scroll, which was written in 1890 in Brno, a city situated about 100 miles southeast of Prague. They had the scroll shipped to the

Levi, Thirza and Ezra: Why are non-Jewish Dutch parents giving their children Jewish names?

(Dawid Ziolkowski/EyeEm/Getty Images)

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — As he lists the names of his many grandchildren, Joop van Ooijen recites what sounds like a roll call at a typical Israeli classroom.

Yair, Yael, Lael, Odelia, Netanya, Yoaz and Shilon are some of his grandkids with modern names, favored by the Israeli middle class. Baruch, Moshe, Elisheva and Yehuda are among the classics, popular with religious Jewish parents all over the world.

But neither the Van Ooijens nor their 16 children are Jewish.

They are a Protestant Christian family in a small town in the Netherlands, which is among a handful of places in Europe where it’s common for non-Jews to have

This Jewish family has been making honey wine for 150 years

Rachel Lipman, at 28 perhaps the youngest winemaker in Maryland, is pushing through boundaries in a traditionally male-dominated industry. (Jonna Michelle Photography)

Rachel Lipman cares deeply about preserving her Jewish family’s fifth-generation winemaking business, Loew Vineyards, but the 28-year-old is keeping an eye on the future, too. As one of the youngest winemakers in Maryland — if not the youngest — she’s pushing through boundaries in a traditionally male-dominated industry.

But that’s not all. Lipman is also educating customers about her family’s extraordinary legacy of producing unique wines — a 150-year-old family tradition that was nearly eradicated by the Holocaust.

Among the 14 wines currently available on the Loew Vineyards website, four are not wines in a traditional sense. Rather they are meads, or honey wine. Meads are

Watchdog: Dozens of UNRWA teachers condone violence, spread antisemitism online

UN Watch urges donor countries to defund UN agency for Palestinians, says it made no effort to address past complaints.

By TOI STAFF

Palestinian schoolchildren studying at an UNRWA school in Gaza City. (IRIN/Creative Commons via JTA)

Dozens of teachers and other workers employed by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees have incited violence, shared photos praising Adolf Hitler, and spread antisemitic conspiracy theories on social media, according to a report compiled by a watchdog released early Monday.

The UN Watch report identified 22 UNRWA teachers in Gaza, the West Bank,

Spanish university cancels ‘Auschwitz/Gaza’ seminar comparing Holocaust to Israeli-Palestinian conflict

A flyer for the course titled "Auschwitz/Gaza: A testing ground for comparative literature. (Wikimedia Commons)

MADRID (JTA) — After taking criticism from several Holocaust scholars and Jewish organizations, a Spanish university has canceled a course titled “Auschwitz/Gaza: A Testing Ground for Comparative Literature,” according to the European Jewish Congress.

The course at the University of of Santiago of de Compostela in Galicia trivialized the Holocaust by comparing it to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jewish groups argued. The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the seminar in a letter sent Monday to Spain’s minister of universities, Manuel Castells Oliván.

Spain is suddenly turning down many Jews who apply for citizenship. Why?

A ceremony at Spain's Royal Palace in Madrid marked the passing of a law granting citizenship to Sephardic Jews, Nov. 30, 2015. (Juan Naharro Gimenez/WireImage/Getty Images)

MADRID (JTA) — Bernardo Pulido spent over $29,000 on genealogical documentation, Jewish heritage certificates, attorney fees and trips to Spain to prove his Sephardic heritage.

But last month, like so many others attempting to gain Spanish citizenship through a 2015 law promising to right the wrongs of the Spanish Inquisition that expelled Jews, Pulido received a rejection letter from the Spanish government.

Pulido, a 61-year-old engineer from Caracas, Venezuela, drew a parallel between the decision and the Inquisition, which forced many of his ancestors to flee in 1492,